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The Argument for Guns

Is there data on firing incidents in nonmetropolitan areas? I wonder how often people actually pull a gun to protect themselves because of poor response times from law enforcement.

Clearly it's a less effective substitute, but what about a nonlethal weapon like a taser for home security?
 
jhmd2000 said:
Sure. My Remington 1100 shotgun has a very focused capacity to do a specific task at short distances a limited number of times. For instance, if an intruder is in my hallway at night, there's a pretty good chance he will be all over that hallway in small pieces. It's not a high capacity, long distance killing machine. It's the essence of a home defense firearm. THAT is responsible gun ownership. I have no use for a high capacity AR-15. None.
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And that makes a lot of sense. But what we've seen is that in most cases of public shootings, there is some issue with mental illness and most of us have a "breaking point." Personally, I'd rather live in a place where when people get to that point, they don't have access to a tool that is designed for the purpose of killing.
 
Safe storage is an important issue. I believe that Australia basically requires all gun owners to have and use a gun safe. Mandatory safe storage would go a long way toward reducing gun suicide, gun accidents involving children, and crimping the black market in stolen guns.
 
bigdoublezero said:
Is there data on firing incidents in nonmetropolitan areas? I wonder how often people actually pull a gun to protect themselves because of poor response times from law enforcement.

Clearly it's a less effective substitute, but what about a nonlethal weapon like a taser for home security?
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It's going to be hard to find reliable numbers for this; incidents of brandishing in self defense, when shots aren't fired, and you're outside the home are likely under reported.
 
I can't imagine it's 2M+ times a year. If you look at violent crime rates, there's just no way.
 
leftcoastdeac said:
It's going to be hard to find reliable numbers for this; incidents of brandishing in self defense, when shots aren't fired, and you're outside the home are likely under reported.
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I'm sure it's hard to come up with an estimation. That said, an incredible amount of research is done on gun use in America, so I bet lots of people have tried. And I think if you're going to justify the use of guns, and all the horrible things that come along with it, because you want to feel safer about living out in bumfuck, the onus is sort of on those people to back it up.
 
In 2014, the best possible outcome of an armed rebellion in a advanced state is a grinding, guerrilla war stalemate ("best" from the perspective of the rebels, not the perspective of the non-participating civilians that have to live with it). That assumes the state refrains from using maximum firepower.
 
EatLeadCommie said:
Ugh. Background checks I'm all for. Make them instant. They already are, and there is no excuse for them not to be. As far as getting mental health flags and shit into the system, that is not really a partisan issue in the gun debate. It's an individual privacy issue that has to be fought in the courts. I'm all for it, but it's not as simple as passing a law and having it done.

Waiting periods make no sense and never have. The assumption there is that somebody buying a gun needs to "cool off". What kind of horseshit is that? How many people go buy a gun to kill somebody versus the girl who needs one immediately because she has a crazy motherfucker stalking her. The whole waiting period argument is simply insulting.

National gun registry is a non-starter. No way, no how. You want to do it at the state level, then fine, but I won't be living in that state if I can help it.

I don't see a reason for limiting gun and ammo ownership either. Because some mass shooter has a couple guns? It's nobody's goddamn business how many guns a person owns. If you implement limits on gun ownership at, say, 5 guns, that means a record of it is somewhere, most likely the ATF. So now the ATF knows that you own guns and 5 of them. Seems like a good reason to be needlessly targeted by a bloated government agency with nothing else to do.

Liability is a state issue. As a mechanism to reduce gun violence, I don't see how it affects anything. Say my gun gets stolen. Whether I notice it immediately or after some fucker uses it in a crime really doesn't matter. And how liable should I really be when the weapon is stolen? That means somebody came into my house, violated the sanctity of my sanctuary, and fucking took something I own. I'm the criminal because somebody else committed a criminal act? The only way that reporting theft would help is if it stops it from being pawned. You catch the guy who stole it and tried to pawn it, but he isn't the guy who used it to shoot people. He's the guy who tried to pawn it for money. Maybe he has shot somebody before and maybe he will in the future, but he didn't then.

Again, the whole concept behind most of your ideas is control, but control in this case doesn't appear to have any real law enforcement value. If you had said just ban all gun ownership, then yeah, that would have an effect on gun violence, though I'm not sure what the effect would be on overall violent crime. Frankly, the trade-off there between perceived social security from a full-on gun ban and the restriction on my freedoms to defend myself is not worth it to me.
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Once background checks are instant and reliable the need for a waiting period goes away.

Other than a general distrust of the government (which is admittedly somewhat well founded) there is no reason not to support a national gun registry. The government already knows how many cars you have, how many homes you have, how much money you make, etc. And as you mentioned a national gun registry would be necessary to enforce my other suggestions.

The main reason to limit the number of guns that you can own is that it will limit the number of guns overall. There is really no need to have more than 5 to 10 guns. At the moment it is far too easy for people with no business possessing a gun to obtain a gun. Reducing the number of guns will reduce access to guns.

Liability is a state issue and would need to be tied to federal funds. I'm more envisioning scenarios where people who commit violent crimes with guns obtain those guns from friends or relatives. Again this would be about reducing access to guns. If there was strict liability for crimes committed with your guns you would certainly take extra precautions to keep those guns safe.

I'm not saying all or any of those ideas are perfect. My point is that gun-owners would be better served coming up with practical solutions to the gun violence problem rather than saying the only thing that will work is a full ban on gun ownership. If that's the only solution you propose then it might be the one we end up with.
 
RChildress107 said:
My point is that gun-owners would be better served coming up with practical solutions to the gun violence problem rather than saying the only thing that will work is a full ban on gun ownership. If that's the only solution you propose then it might be the one we end up with.
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One can hope...
 
TownieDeac said:
Ignoring the law enforcement response time caveat, self-defense gun statistics vary wildly depending on the source.

The NRA says somewhere between 2-2.5 MILLION times per year a gun is used (fired or not) in self-defense. The VPC says 67,000/yr.

There's also this coefficient to consider.

Number of gun homicides (so not accidental deaths or suicides) in 2010 - 8275
Number of justifiable homicides in 2010 - 230
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"According to our just-released Crime in the United States, 2011 report, the estimated number of violent crimes reported to law enforcement (1,203,564) decreased for the fifth year in a row, while the estimated number of property crimes reported to law enforcement (9,063,173) decreased for the ninth year in a row."

So the NRA is saying that guns are pulled in 20-25% of all crimes/attempted crimes in the US.

Man do they have their people totally brainwashed.
 
TownieDeac said:
This is fucking absurd. The military could annihilate its citizenry in a fucking day if given the order.
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baconwfu is a pretty level-headed poster. His idea that regular folks with guns could defend themselves against the military is worthy of the term "gun nuts."
 
Deacon923 said:
In 2014, the best possible outcome of an armed rebellion in a advanced state is a grinding, guerrilla war stalemate ("best" from the perspective of the rebels, not the perspective of the non-participating civilians that have to live with it). That assumes the state refrains from using maximum firepower.
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This. Remember we still have not won in Afghanistan.
 
TownieDeac said:
I don't? Please educate me then. I'm sure it's an appealing concept to think we could protect ourselves against a tyrannical, murderous government, but it's not going to happen. Tanks, drones, and the best military on the planet win.
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That's right you don't know. I know that because you immediately disimissed what I said as "fucking absurd" and assumed we're talking about large scale head to head warfare instead of at least asking in a reasonable way what I was talking about. (of course given general tunnels discourse, I suppose your response isn't unusual)

Again, preserving the RIGHT to bear arms is important. The right to bear arms gives people power. I'm not talking about the ability to stage a coup on a government that has tanks, planes, etc with handguns and rifles. I'm talking about a deterrent on a government becoming oppressive in the first place. (deterrent because a citizenry with access to arms will be quite difficult to oppress).
Now you're more than welcome to say, "I hear what you're saying, but I think that (an oppressive US government) has no chance of happening", or "I think the human costs isn't worth the "protection" that having guns affords". Both of those are understandable statements and I can't argue with them other than to say I disagree.

Do I think that the US government would turn oppressive in my lifetime....No? But I do think the right to bear arms is a check against governmental power.
 
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So basically, baconwfu, you believe citizens could hold off the military as long as the military fights the war you want them to fight. Deterrent is ridiculous. It's not like militaries all over the world only engage in wars with countries with strong gun control.

And awaken, bringing up Afghanistan is a LOL comparison. That's not apples and oranges. That's apples and a can of paint.

bacon, what restrictions (if any) do you believe there should be on the right to bear arms?
 
I'd say the RIGHT to a free press is about a thousand times more effective than access to guns to act as a deterrent to an oppressive regime in America.
 
bigdoublezero said:
I'd say the RIGHT to a free press is about a thousand times more effective than access to guns to act as a deterrent to an oppressive regime in America.
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I'd say there are several more amendments that are better deterrents to an oppressive regime than the 2nd amendment, particularly when you include the amendments that were enacted specifically in response to American oppression.
 
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