You could make guns illegal tomorrow and the criminals would continue to break the law
And you could keep them legal and criminals with also continue to break the law. ONLY difference being that you can be tried for shooting said criminals.
I'd like to think that most are "manly" enough to not resort to a firearm each time (as if this happens daily?!!) their house is burglarized.
And you could keep them legal and criminals with also continue to break the law. ONLY difference being that you can be tried for shooting said criminals.
I'd like to think that most are "manly" enough to not resort to a firearm each time (as if this happens daily?!!) their house is burglarized.
Phaedrus rolls on floor laughing, imagining the Monty Python skit from hell that RFC envisions as a typical house burglary.
"Pardon me sir; may I help you?"
"Oh, good evening. No thanks; just having a bit of a rifle through these drawers here. Rent's due on Tuesday, you know."
"Ah, I see. Well, I'm up now; might as well put on a pot. Care for a spot of tea?"
"Jolly good! Say, that daughter of yours is quite fetching. Mind if I give her a wee poke?"
"Well, can't see any harm to that. She'll be at it soon enough whether or not I agree, won't she?"
"Right-O!"
"Carry on! I'll be minding this kettle."
And to think my silly, uneducated, over-violent American buffoon of a self purchased a police-issue Winchester 12-gauge based on the specific feature that loaded with the proper rounds (3" mag 00 buck shot, pip pip!) I don't even have to be in the same room as an intruder in order to shoot him.
Phaedrus
"Pardon me sir; may I help you?"
"Oh, good evening. No thanks; just having a bit of a rifle through these drawers here. Rent's due on Tuesday, you know."
"Ah, I see. Well, I'm up now; might as well put on a pot. Care for a spot of tea?"
"Jolly good! Say, that daughter of yours is quite fetching. Mind if I give her a wee poke?"
"Well, can't see any harm to that. She'll be at it soon enough whether or not I agree, won't she?"
"Right-O!"
"Carry on! I'll be minding this kettle."
And to think my silly, uneducated, over-violent American buffoon of a self purchased a police-issue Winchester 12-gauge based on the specific feature that loaded with the proper rounds (3" mag 00 buck shot, pip pip!) I don't even have to be in the same room as an intruder in order to shoot him.
Phaedrus
Interesting piece from the London Telegraph on the issue of American gun crime vs. other nations, in this particular case the UK's.
Still laughing as I imagine Terry Jones coming down the stairs in a moomoo and wig to find John Cleese at the bottom, "'erbert! What's that noise?" "Nothing dear; just a burglar." "'Herbert, you've been shot!" "Go on back to bed Mathilda, there's a girl." But you're shot!" "It's only a flesh wound; run along now!"
If only I were manly enough to not think that a stranger in my house in the middle of the night should not be shredded.
Phaedrus
Still laughing as I imagine Terry Jones coming down the stairs in a moomoo and wig to find John Cleese at the bottom, "'erbert! What's that noise?" "Nothing dear; just a burglar." "'Herbert, you've been shot!" "Go on back to bed Mathilda, there's a girl." But you're shot!" "It's only a flesh wound; run along now!"
If only I were manly enough to not think that a stranger in my house in the middle of the night should not be shredded.
Phaedrus
Sorry, I neglected to furnish the link in my previous reply:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30365
RFC, let me try to answer your question seriously and succintly, as I realise I tend to ramble and sometimes get downright ugly in my posts.
Does having a gun in my house make my house any safer? Well, no -- it won't for instance prevent my house from burning down. But does having a gun in my house make my family and myself safer from the specific threat of potentially violent intruders? Inarguably.
I don't sit in my back yard popping rounds at empty Shlitz Malt Liquor (tm) cans, imagining some large ethnic goon with a crowbar advancing on me, doing my best Clint Eastwood. Once in a while I take the thing down, break it up and clean it, inspect it and put it back. Once in a greater while, I'll take it somewhere for some random target practice. Aside from that, and my near-constant gun control debating, I seldom if ever even think about the damned thing. But it's my choice, my conscious and responsible choice to provide myself with a means almost certainly superior to something which an intruder would be carrying, so that in the (again, unlikely) event that such an intruder were to show up in my home I could adequately provide for the defence of my family (and myself of course.)
I've never understood how this concept can be so hard for the average anti-gun advocate to grasp. I harbour no fantasies of being some superhero because I own a gun. I own a gun precisely because I am no superhero. And I absolutely have the will to kill anyone or anything that is anywhere it isn't supposed to be with regards to my home and my family. You don't even have to specifically threaten me, another point which raises the hackles of many self-proclaimed pacifists who take an altogether more Ghandi-esque view of the matter of self-defence than I. If I wake up, it's three a.m., and you are jimmying your way into my sunroom via the exterior door, bang you are dead. You get no warning shot, no "Hark! Who goes there?" and no "I've got a gun and I'm not afriad to use it mister!" I will simply blow a hole or two in you and consider the matter settled, and then most likely (as I have mentioned in the past) go hurl up my dinner into the toilet, as I do not actually consider myself all that well-cut out for killing.
BUT ... while I am no killer, I am a father and husband. To me this means, among a great many other things, that I am a protector. That, while there was no specific part of my wedding vows or my son's birth certificate forms which mentioned blasting a gaping wound into the chest of an intruder, that the impetus is on me to protect my family as the first and possibly last line of defence. Not because it's macho, not because I want my life made into a T.V. movie, but because as a husband and father this is what I sincerely believe that I am supposed to do -- one of many things which I believe I am supposed to do for my family, such as work and listen and respect their privacy and be faithful to my wife and innumerable other things both big and small.
Insurance is for after-the-fact. Police to a large extent are as well, especially where I live (assuming I dialed 911 and there was not a policeman randomly driving around in the sticks, it would be a good fifteen minutes to half an hour before help arrived, perhaps even more before they got into the house and the thick of things as the place is well back from the road.) I don't really obsess about these things nearly as much as anti-gun people do. I have a life insurance policy, but I don't sit around worrying about when or under what circumstances I'm going to die. I put a car alarm on my car but I don't sit around worrying if it will be enough to deter a thief. I just take a precaution here, a precaution there, such as purchasing and maintaining a weapon for the purpose of defending my home in the event that such a threat should arise. It honestly just seems to be the prudent thing to do.
Well, I said "succinctly." I lied. But I hope that this better clarifies my position on the matter and distinguishes itself from such knee-jerk responses as "stupid liberal fvcks wanna take all my guns from me."
Phaedrus
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30365
RFC, let me try to answer your question seriously and succintly, as I realise I tend to ramble and sometimes get downright ugly in my posts.
Does having a gun in my house make my house any safer? Well, no -- it won't for instance prevent my house from burning down. But does having a gun in my house make my family and myself safer from the specific threat of potentially violent intruders? Inarguably.
I don't sit in my back yard popping rounds at empty Shlitz Malt Liquor (tm) cans, imagining some large ethnic goon with a crowbar advancing on me, doing my best Clint Eastwood. Once in a while I take the thing down, break it up and clean it, inspect it and put it back. Once in a greater while, I'll take it somewhere for some random target practice. Aside from that, and my near-constant gun control debating, I seldom if ever even think about the damned thing. But it's my choice, my conscious and responsible choice to provide myself with a means almost certainly superior to something which an intruder would be carrying, so that in the (again, unlikely) event that such an intruder were to show up in my home I could adequately provide for the defence of my family (and myself of course.)
I've never understood how this concept can be so hard for the average anti-gun advocate to grasp. I harbour no fantasies of being some superhero because I own a gun. I own a gun precisely because I am no superhero. And I absolutely have the will to kill anyone or anything that is anywhere it isn't supposed to be with regards to my home and my family. You don't even have to specifically threaten me, another point which raises the hackles of many self-proclaimed pacifists who take an altogether more Ghandi-esque view of the matter of self-defence than I. If I wake up, it's three a.m., and you are jimmying your way into my sunroom via the exterior door, bang you are dead. You get no warning shot, no "Hark! Who goes there?" and no "I've got a gun and I'm not afriad to use it mister!" I will simply blow a hole or two in you and consider the matter settled, and then most likely (as I have mentioned in the past) go hurl up my dinner into the toilet, as I do not actually consider myself all that well-cut out for killing.
BUT ... while I am no killer, I am a father and husband. To me this means, among a great many other things, that I am a protector. That, while there was no specific part of my wedding vows or my son's birth certificate forms which mentioned blasting a gaping wound into the chest of an intruder, that the impetus is on me to protect my family as the first and possibly last line of defence. Not because it's macho, not because I want my life made into a T.V. movie, but because as a husband and father this is what I sincerely believe that I am supposed to do -- one of many things which I believe I am supposed to do for my family, such as work and listen and respect their privacy and be faithful to my wife and innumerable other things both big and small.
Insurance is for after-the-fact. Police to a large extent are as well, especially where I live (assuming I dialed 911 and there was not a policeman randomly driving around in the sticks, it would be a good fifteen minutes to half an hour before help arrived, perhaps even more before they got into the house and the thick of things as the place is well back from the road.) I don't really obsess about these things nearly as much as anti-gun people do. I have a life insurance policy, but I don't sit around worrying about when or under what circumstances I'm going to die. I put a car alarm on my car but I don't sit around worrying if it will be enough to deter a thief. I just take a precaution here, a precaution there, such as purchasing and maintaining a weapon for the purpose of defending my home in the event that such a threat should arise. It honestly just seems to be the prudent thing to do.
Well, I said "succinctly." I lied. But I hope that this better clarifies my position on the matter and distinguishes itself from such knee-jerk responses as "stupid liberal fvcks wanna take all my guns from me."
Phaedrus
Found a nice piece on some of the same concepts I mentioned earlier at A Human Right.
********
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." (J.R.R.Tolkien, The Two Towers)
The first question many people ask is: "Why guns?" Some ask more generally, "Why advocate ownership of weapons?" The answer is far from simple but it is logical. Read on.
We, humans, have the enviable position at the top of the food chain. Although individuals occasionally fall prey to wild beasts, as a species we are safe, except from ourselves. Being an omnivore of modest size, we got to this privileged position through our use of tools. Tools we use are not limited to guns: equally simple mechanical devices have done much to improve the quality of human life.
It is also fortunate that most humans are disposed to cooperate with each other. However, the exceptions to that "most" are sufficient to make weapons ownership a necessity for the rest. Human aggression happens on two levels: individual and organized. Let's consider them separately.
Becoming an adult involves learning to respect others and to take responsibility for our own actions. Most people learn those skills and appreciate the values on which peaceful coexistence is predicated. Unfortunately, a minority of people, fewer than 2%, decline to behave in a civilized manner. Civilized behavior, for the purpose of our discussion, could be described as acting humanely towards others even if no punishment would be incurred by acting meanly.
Some of the mean humans are not deterred from harming others by any considerations. Such people are, thankfully, very rare and generally make the news eventually. However, most mean individuals, including those we might consider crazy, behave rationally even if in pursuit of irrational goals. Such people weigh the costs and benefits of their actions and so try to pick victims who cannot fight back.
Here we come to the first benefit of weapons ownership. You may not be armed but those who would harm you for gratification or profit have no way of knowing that. Statistically, they run a risk of accidentally attacking an armed person. That prospective victim may or may not be armed. In that way, general tradition of being able to resist evil affords you some protection. In nature, the concept is termed protective mimicry: a harmless animal would imitate a more formidable species and thus give pause to the would-be predators.
Similarly, predators who select victims based on the expected inability to resist, often desist when even a small number of the expected easy marks give them trouble. For example, where even a few women are known to be armed, all women benefit from the reduction in attempted rapes and other violent crimes. That no external differences indicate which person is defenseless and which isn't makes all of us safer.
No one in their right mind, be they peaceful humans or predators, would enjoy a firefight. Safety of the humans is much improved whenever the predators have to endure combat in order to get what they want, with no guarantee of victory but with a serious risk to their hides. The concept of peace through ability to win a war might sound flippant but the sentiment is accurate.
Just as individual predators act in their self-interest, so do organizations and states. Historically, government actions against minority groups have been motivated by greed, religious or ethnic bigotry, need to find scapegoats and many other, equally unsavory reasons. Consequences to civilians who could not protect themselves, such as the Parisian Hugenots in 1572 or the Polish Jews in 1939 or the Cambodian intelligencia in 1975, have been invariably catastrophic. Considering the frequency and the increasing efficiency of genocides, outbreeding the casualties is impractical.
Some say that by the mere ability to resist evil we become the very evil we fight. That view equates initiation of aggression for spite or profit with defense of self and family. In my humble opinion, the two are not equal. Protection of innocents is a noble cause. Failure to plan or failure to act when necessary is not noble, merely irresponsible for it leads to extinction and encourages predators to victimize others besides us.
Being safe does not mean that we should all string barbed wire around our homes, mine the front lawn and sit behind sandbagged windows in anticipation of hostile hordes. Leading righteous, peaceful lives, being good to others, working to improve ourselves and the world would do much to improve our safety. Yet, just as good health doesn't depend on plenty of excercise or a good diet, safety does not depend only on being armed or on being a decent human. Each is an essential component of the whole.
Being armed doesn't mean that we fear our environment. Simply put, being prepared reduces criminal predation to a solved problem. After all, having soap in a bathroom doesn't indicate a paranoid fear of germs, only the recognition of a problem and a ready solution to it.
In some minds, guns are linked to murder and other unlawful uses. Yet, they seldom view gasoline, matches, wire, kitchen knives or hobnailed boots as tools of violence. People are familiar with those everyday objects and know that they are not evil magic.
Conditioning by television or newspapers makes some view every gun as a tragedy in the making. Evening news often show a picture of a gun even when talking about a beating which involved feet and fists. Without a real-world basis for comparison, it is easy to assume that firearms are possessed of supernatural powers. After all, if our understanding of computers was based on Hollywood, wouldn't we all live in fear of killer robots and rogue mainframes?
********
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." (J.R.R.Tolkien, The Two Towers)
The first question many people ask is: "Why guns?" Some ask more generally, "Why advocate ownership of weapons?" The answer is far from simple but it is logical. Read on.
We, humans, have the enviable position at the top of the food chain. Although individuals occasionally fall prey to wild beasts, as a species we are safe, except from ourselves. Being an omnivore of modest size, we got to this privileged position through our use of tools. Tools we use are not limited to guns: equally simple mechanical devices have done much to improve the quality of human life.
It is also fortunate that most humans are disposed to cooperate with each other. However, the exceptions to that "most" are sufficient to make weapons ownership a necessity for the rest. Human aggression happens on two levels: individual and organized. Let's consider them separately.
Becoming an adult involves learning to respect others and to take responsibility for our own actions. Most people learn those skills and appreciate the values on which peaceful coexistence is predicated. Unfortunately, a minority of people, fewer than 2%, decline to behave in a civilized manner. Civilized behavior, for the purpose of our discussion, could be described as acting humanely towards others even if no punishment would be incurred by acting meanly.
Some of the mean humans are not deterred from harming others by any considerations. Such people are, thankfully, very rare and generally make the news eventually. However, most mean individuals, including those we might consider crazy, behave rationally even if in pursuit of irrational goals. Such people weigh the costs and benefits of their actions and so try to pick victims who cannot fight back.
Here we come to the first benefit of weapons ownership. You may not be armed but those who would harm you for gratification or profit have no way of knowing that. Statistically, they run a risk of accidentally attacking an armed person. That prospective victim may or may not be armed. In that way, general tradition of being able to resist evil affords you some protection. In nature, the concept is termed protective mimicry: a harmless animal would imitate a more formidable species and thus give pause to the would-be predators.
Similarly, predators who select victims based on the expected inability to resist, often desist when even a small number of the expected easy marks give them trouble. For example, where even a few women are known to be armed, all women benefit from the reduction in attempted rapes and other violent crimes. That no external differences indicate which person is defenseless and which isn't makes all of us safer.
No one in their right mind, be they peaceful humans or predators, would enjoy a firefight. Safety of the humans is much improved whenever the predators have to endure combat in order to get what they want, with no guarantee of victory but with a serious risk to their hides. The concept of peace through ability to win a war might sound flippant but the sentiment is accurate.
Just as individual predators act in their self-interest, so do organizations and states. Historically, government actions against minority groups have been motivated by greed, religious or ethnic bigotry, need to find scapegoats and many other, equally unsavory reasons. Consequences to civilians who could not protect themselves, such as the Parisian Hugenots in 1572 or the Polish Jews in 1939 or the Cambodian intelligencia in 1975, have been invariably catastrophic. Considering the frequency and the increasing efficiency of genocides, outbreeding the casualties is impractical.
Some say that by the mere ability to resist evil we become the very evil we fight. That view equates initiation of aggression for spite or profit with defense of self and family. In my humble opinion, the two are not equal. Protection of innocents is a noble cause. Failure to plan or failure to act when necessary is not noble, merely irresponsible for it leads to extinction and encourages predators to victimize others besides us.
Being safe does not mean that we should all string barbed wire around our homes, mine the front lawn and sit behind sandbagged windows in anticipation of hostile hordes. Leading righteous, peaceful lives, being good to others, working to improve ourselves and the world would do much to improve our safety. Yet, just as good health doesn't depend on plenty of excercise or a good diet, safety does not depend only on being armed or on being a decent human. Each is an essential component of the whole.
Being armed doesn't mean that we fear our environment. Simply put, being prepared reduces criminal predation to a solved problem. After all, having soap in a bathroom doesn't indicate a paranoid fear of germs, only the recognition of a problem and a ready solution to it.
In some minds, guns are linked to murder and other unlawful uses. Yet, they seldom view gasoline, matches, wire, kitchen knives or hobnailed boots as tools of violence. People are familiar with those everyday objects and know that they are not evil magic.
Conditioning by television or newspapers makes some view every gun as a tragedy in the making. Evening news often show a picture of a gun even when talking about a beating which involved feet and fists. Without a real-world basis for comparison, it is easy to assume that firearms are possessed of supernatural powers. After all, if our understanding of computers was based on Hollywood, wouldn't we all live in fear of killer robots and rogue mainframes?
