Guns will protect you from tsunamis.
 

NRA's wacky graphic novel:

Freedom In Peril: Guarding the 2nd Amendment in the 21st Century

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If you're not scared enough to buy a riot gun today by this fear-mongering, then I don't know what else could make you.

Discussed here

Ever think it might be determination to prevail rather than 'fear', Hip? Bet you've not... the antis have the oddest mindset, being over-hostile to self defense and all the human rights it helps guarantee. But do they ever see that deeply? Not on your life.

I am persuaded, on abundant evidence and stellar reasoning (no, not my own, you grabasstic unorganized wombat-schtupper), that if you're gun people, you are smarter.

No. Just better armed.


And if you think that is smarter.......

Oh god...here we go again....

Yes, as a matter of fact, we do.

UT, sorry for my duplicate post, haven't been around that much anymore and kinda lost the daily touch. Looked for a delete button, but couldn't find it.

Anywayz.... your knee jerk response was expected, UG. I guess that's why you chose that silly handle. Maybe you were born 150 years late? Guns for brains...

A most classic example of 'big dic' thinking. Using the wrong head to think with: 'big dic' thinking. Clearly they are smarter. 'Big dic' thinking gave us "Mission Accomplished".

Who were the strongest advocates of that unjustified war? Same people who promote more guns for safer streets. 'Big dic' thinking is still alive and well despite lessons from history. So some (UG) must then rewrite history.

Gawd, I'm just so in awe of our highly-evolved Eurofriend. No, really...

Ok, we've heard from the Big Dic thinker now let's turn the floor over to the Small Dic thinker...

You have. They are telling MaggieL how naive and rediculous her logic is.

Clearly more guns in Iraq have made Iraqi streets so much safer. Why does she fear to touch that fact? Clearly more guns in Sudan and Somolia are making those nations safer. Clearly the increase in guns now carried on Phily's streets are now making Philly safer. Philadelphia is may have the second highest year of violent deaths because even kids are now so routinely carrying guns. According to MaggieL, that should have causes a decrease in murders - not an increase. But these are facts that 'big dic' thinking must ignore.

Maybe you would, unless you prefer the quantity murders/killings?

BTW I saw on that pic with you that you own a gun with a telescope. Is that for self defense also? At least that was what I thought, because it was in an article about self defense.

tw, please rewrite that in proper english - I know you have a point or two to make, but I can't seem to find it.

More legal firearms reduce the crime rates. Philadelphia does not have a lot of legal or legally carried firearms. The Phila PD controls permit issuance, and it is nigh impossible to get one there.

I assure you that the young men who are pointing Glocks sideways at each other aren't legal owners.

The "kids" are involved in the drug trade, even if the news won't tell you that.

Iraq is a warzone, usual statistics do not apply. But answer me this ... how many people (average citizens as well as american military) are being shot by insurgents vs. being blow up by them?

So then you do agree the ownership of a firearm with responsibility - just like a driver’s license - is a good thing. Problem is that MaggieL posts all ownership of guns means less violent crime. Maybe she wants to clarify that because her current posts imply wide open and unrestricted ownership of guns means less crime.

Driver licensing is not a good analogy, as driving is a privilege, and keeping and bearing arms is a whatchamacallit again? oh yeah, a Right.

Please cite an example where I said *all* gun ownership means less violent crime (or accept the "liar" label you so delight in trying to hang on others).

I do maintain *legal* gun ownership means less violent crime.

Legal gun ownership does *not* include

-- concealed carry without a permit in jurisdictions where a permit is required,

-- use of a firearm in comission of a felony,or posession of firearms by those not legally qualiied to posess them: convicted felons, those to whom firearms are prohibited as a condition of their probation

-- handgun posession by anyone under 21.

So then you are in favor of gun control.

It *could* be used for home defense, although that is not its primary use by design. That rifle fires .22LR ammunition, and is best used for target shooting (or possibly hunting small nuisance animals; but we're friends with the local woodchucks --a.k.a "groundhogs"-- and tend to leave them alone.). .22LR would not be my first choice for a self-defense load even in a rifle; it doesn't deliver enough kinetic energy to be effective against larger targets.

The scope sight is useful because of the distances at which the rifle is used. and we included it in the photo shoot to add visual interest, since Gwen was already displaying her Kimber autoloader.

I first shot .22LR on the rifle team in college--although of course a scope is not used in competition! In fact, there was a time when training in small caliber rifle was very common in US secondary schools; .22LR is a good training load because the recoil is light and the beginning shooter--of either long guns or handguns--can develop the fundamentals without the likelyhood of developing a flinch.

But I certainly don't intend to attempt to justify the weapons owned by my household to an obvious hoplophobe.

No.

Let's dispose of the *last* time you misquoted me before you put even more words in my mouth. Where's your cite where I said *all* gun posession reduces crime? Or don't you have one?

Why is that? Because semiautomatics and cars hadn't been invented yet?

For starters, because it is enumerated as such in the Constitution.

For other supporting background, I'd recommend reading The Right to Keep and Bear Arms: Report of the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the US Senate, 97th Congress

I think rifles and shotguns should be allowed because I am all in favor of hunting and being able to shoot a rifle. Handguns and automatic weapons on the other hand, scare me. You don't need a handgun to protect your home, if I broke into someone's house I would be a lot more scared of a shotgun than a 9mm pointed at me.

I am in favor of a law against concealed weapons not because I don't think people should have them, I just think things will get out of hand because people are stupid. For example, if someone robs you with a gun and you have a concealed gun yourself you are tempted to use it. So you pull it out, the natural reaction of the guy robbing you is to shoot you. So instead of losing a few hundred dollars you lose your life. Allowing concealed weapons will also give people confidence to take paths they would not usually take, which gets them into more trouble.

As Wolf said, they guys robbing you with guns don't get them legally, crime will not go down. Most often crime is a last resort for people and they are wiling to take the risk of someone having a gun. All it will do is create moments when two scared people have guns and that leads to death, plain and simple.

That's what I said.

:corn:

Well, it actually turns out that I'm not always at home. Sometimes I venture out, to go to work, or buy food, etc. You'd be surprised how quickly people get upset if you walk around some places with a long gun on your shoulder...like a shopping mall, for example. Are you saying that I should not have a right to defend myself if I'm not at home?

I think if you actually knew anything about firearms beyond finding them scary to varying degrees, you'd know that a rifle or a shotgun is far from ideal even in some home defense situations, for example at close range or in close quarters; lika a small apartment.

Let's sum up your position: you're scared of handguns because you wouldn't be as scared of them as you would be of a shotgun...which doesn't scare you as much as handguns do. (Please get your phobias straightened out before you start proposing laws based on them, OK?)

What scares *me* is people who want to disarm me because one kind or another of guns scare them. That's called hoplophobia. Maybe we should make hoplophobia illegal, since the fact that something scares you seems to be grounds for banning it.

It is? Where?

I assume you haven't read the Hatch Report yet.

Perhaps we need to distinguish what guns should be controlled and which should be banned. As an avid hunter I see no reason to ban shotguns or hunting rifles. However, I still see no need for "Joe Average" to own an assault weapon. To me they should be illegal.

The first part of this para professes the "theory of the evil gun," that some types of arm are in some way more conducive of, well, brutality than are others. This theory is exploded on closer study: the very characteristics of concealable portability that make the handgun attractive to the felon intent on robbery are the very characteristics that make the handgun the best immediate defense -- because the defender can simply wear the piece around his daily doings, and thus will have it available to resist the evil attentions of the criminal.

The second part exhibits ignorance of home defense tactics. A long arm is rather bulky and can be levered away from the defender more easily at hand to hand range than a properly held pistol can. Also, consider the blast of a larger long arm cartridge of any description, touched off in the confined space of a room -- it well nigh brings down the plaster, and its disorienting effect works as hard on the defender as on the invader. Not something the defender will want. Handgun cartridges are a little less battering, and that is all to the good. This is not to say long arms don't have their place in home defense, but it is usually a last-ditch defense of the designated panic room/rendezvous chamber, e.g., the kids and any other noncombatants on the floor behind the bed in the master bedroom along with one of the defenders forted up in the same place, firing across the bed if an invader enters (and there's a protocol to ensure the man of the house with the pistol intended to meet the invaders with doesn't get mistaken at first blush for an invader, as is only sensible). Firing from the "panic room," you see, would be a situation where you really do need, beyond all else, to hit as hard as possible, and let the plaster fall where it may.

In self-defense situations, rather than drunk lowlifes assaulting each other, this doesn't happen, and this is the universal experience of the 38 states in the Union who have liberalized their concealed carry of weapon (CCW) provisions, regulations, and laws. They know something you do not, my friend, and they are staying with liberalized CCW because crime in every such state has plunged. Read John Lott, and Stephen P. Halbrook. Between these two luminaries, you will understand arms far better than you do now.

Only true if they're not any too bright to begin with. The prudent use of arms does not turn a prudent man foolish. If he isn't sworn and paid to do it, he's still not going to be strolling down those alleys.

The science done on this says, no, they aren't willing.

Not so plain and not so simple. 98% of all armed self defense situations are not settled by a firefight, but by simply the threat of one; no shot is fired. Of the remaining two percent, fatality is not an inevitable outcome either, though even wounding can admittedly leave its victim permanently maimed. The maimed most often would take surviving over dying, so you don't hear too much complaining on this score by anyone who knows from experience.

It would lead to deaths, perhaps, if everyone who does it knew no more than you do about it, but education and training about how to prevail in this most dangerous situation can be had by civilians, and at less than the one-year cost of insuring your car. Less, in fact, than some people's monthly insurance payment, for the fundamentals. And one can build on the fundamentals at any time.

As for selective fire weapons, these, being military arms, are the ones most suited for ending genocides, which can really only happen to disarmed peoples. The people who like the full-auto weapons are the ones who are truly, effectually, worthily anti-genocide. All others are less so, and merely flapping their gums, which has never stopped a genocide yet. It isn't stopping one now -- though that genocide would stop if Sudanese janjaweed were to start vanishing beyond recall, and Khartoum-government air support with them. In other words, if a genocide is going on, you must shoot back. Otherwise, you're oven fuel. Did your mama really raise you up to be somebody else's fireplace log?

Do not hope to take refuge in the idea that I don't see any signs of impending genocide. Genocide invariably starts in concealment, and it sneaks up on its victims. Military-type arms are the best, for reasons of logistics and efficiency, and the only known, individual solution to the genocide problem, and AFAWK they are the final solution. The forces of the State have never once kept a genocide from happening, which is unsurprising when you consider State power is necessary to get a genocide under way. See Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership for more on this. Be advised: these people are the real article when it comes to genocide stopping.

Only in the sense of Ringer's Paradox -- and in the using of both hands for the worthwhile sort of gun control: that which puts all your rounds downrange, inside the ten-ring, and at least half cutting the X-ring.

It is to be hoped, tw, that you will conquer your massive ignorance of guns and gun law to come around to the side of the angels. You, of course, will try and dash this hope, for the simple, but bad, reason that it's me telling you. (Vulcan, shmulcan.)

Fortunately, things are not made illegal on the basis of "yesman65 doesn't see a need for them".

The Clinton Gun Ban attempted to create a class of "very evil guns" that were somehow distinguishable from "still evil guns that it's OK to have", it was a dismal failure and allowed to lapse.

If you wish to keep your hunting rifles, you should at least read this.

Ok, I'll go with you that handguns can be better for protection in the home with training. On the streets I'm keeping my stance, oh, I never said we should ban handguns in the home anyways.

I forgot guns are the only way to defend yourself...

Sarcasm is a great way of retaliating isn't it, makes me look stupid by taking my words competely out of context (like how I somewhere pointed out that handguns should be outlawed in the home and rifles are fine in public). Good job, you argue like a tenth grader, grow up and present me facts or common sense.

Way to take my postion out of context...again, must take skill to do that.

By the way, since when did I have a phobia? I just said that some people with handguns scare me, the fact that I, or someone else, can get hurt or killed by irresposibility is scary. I am also scared that I can get killed by a drunk driver and I'm not against drinking or driving, just the two put together. It also doesn't stop me from driving on friday nights either. Stop making assumptions about people, it just makes you look intolerent.

I bet you feel all good about yourself from that rant? Too bad I don't have hoplophobia and too bad I'm not disarming you, just illegalizing concealed weapons, not your ability to possess one.

Funny, I also heard that the new police techniques and legalized abortion also lowers crime. It could also be social forces, but what does all this conclude? Statistics don't prove shit.


The thing is, if guns were harder to get I wouldn't mind the legalized concealed gun law, but guns are very easy to get and anyone can get ahold of them with little or no training. Notice how my opinion is swayed by training and not guns itselves.


This also give me a chance to rant about something else. I have a stance that neither pro-gun or anti-gun but since people on one extreme side thinks anyone who mentions banning guns on one situation is competely anti-gun on every issue which is very far from the truth. Stop splitting people into two groups (pro-gun vs. anti-gun, conservative vs. liberal, capitaist vs. communist, etc) becuase your assumption is going to be wrong a majority of the time if not every.

Well said! I was accused of hoplophobia too but I'm far from anti-gun. Putting somebody into a group (even if they don't belong) is a popular way to start marginalizing them.

Depends on how good you are at it. In your case, as evidenced above...well...
Ipse dixit. Speaks for itself.

Your argument that you're not hoplophobic looks pretty weak after you tell us how much various kinds of firearms scare you, and then propose prohibitions on that basis.

Consider that your fears would be better founded and lead to clearer thought when directed at people and their intentions rather than weapons.

You're in vastly greater danger from a mugger with a knife, lead pipe or rock than you are from me with a full-auto AK-47, because I'm trained in firearms safety and the operation of an AK, and do not intend you harm.

If you make my currently legal possesion of a concealed handgun illegal (I'm currently licenced for concealed carry in 29 states), you have disarmed me when I'm anywhere but in my home, plain and simple.

(*muses*)

Has anyone here ever shot a person?

MaggieL - Why does anyone need a machine gun or an Uzi? - These are the types of guns I think are rediculous for regular citizens to own. They serve no purpose other than to kill humans. I will agree that this creates a very difficult situation where someone has to dide what is and/or isn't ok. If I had to choose one absolute or the other, I agree that there should be no ban, however our police are at times horribly outgunned.

I think they are ridiculous too. The ironic thing is that the Constitution specifically lets us have guns for military reasons. To form Militias. Machine guns and Uzis are the guns the founding fathers would have wanted us to have. But then again, the founding fathers thought it would be cool for us to own slaves, so there you go.

Not all of them.

Then the police need better guns, because criiminals won't follow your laws. That's why we call them criminals.

I won't buy into your prohibitionist line of "Prove to my satisfaction that you need ${x} or the government should take it away from you." That's lame. If you want to restrict my liberty, it's incumbent on you to prove an overwheleming justification for it, and "maybe there would be less violence, I think." doesn't cut it...especially when it's already demonstrated every day that someone who already intends to commit a crime won't be deterred by the fact that their weapon is illegal too.

We've been down all these paths before here over and over on the Cellar. It's always been the case here that a gun prohibitionist espousing a feel-good law that only prohibits weapons he doesn't own won't be convinced by arguments from principle...the principle being that once someone passes a law that firearms with characteristic ${x} (for example full-auto, standard magazine capacity, bayonet lugs, pistol grips have all been tried in the past) should be illegal, they're back in the next session looking to amend the law to expand the class of prohibited weapons because--quelle surprise!--the law was somehow completely ineffective in preventing crime. In fact full-auto weapons are almost never used in crime. They're expensive, and not terribly effective as criminal tools.

Go read http://www.clintongunban.com

Thats because my sarcasm was actually relevant to my point. Guns aren't the only way to defend yourself, it is a fact. Talking about how people get scared if someone is walking around with a rifle on their shoulder is not relevant. Get what I'm talking about?

Do you even know what a phobia is? Just because I twich when looking over a 100 story building doesn't make me an acrophobic. An acrophobic would freak out when seeing someone else go up an elevator, hardly the same. Stop going to extremes, it doesn't help your argument at all.

There we go, a good point. No bias, and it actually makes sense. Yes, my worry (noticed how I changed the word so you don't jump to hoplophobia ;) ) comes from the people who will use these weapons, not the weapons themselves. Yet, when you put the two together, it doesn't really make a difference. That's why I am in favor of training before you can get ahold of a gun. I don't know if this will be brought up but I will answer it anyways. Yes, I would rather have someone rob me with a knife than a gun.

I don't have any fear of you (or worry) because you do not intend to harm me. Yet, if I piss someone off and they go buy a gun two hours later, I will be scared of them. More scared of them with a gun than a knife even though they can both kill me since it is a lot easier to run from a knife than a gun.

Not from your ability to own one. Why do you feel the need to carry a concealed weapon anyways?

MaggieL posts justifications for Gun Control. Then denies she approves of gun control. Obviously a paradox. She previously advocated free access to guns by all. Now she says we should restrict who has access to guns? Which is it MaggieL? Either you advocate gun control or you advocate unrestricted access to guns. They are mutually exclusive. Which is it? How can you advocate restrictions on gun access and then not support gun control? They are same thing. And they both contradict your open opposition to gun control. How do you explain that contradiction?

There are two ways you can say gun control. One is restrictions on who can get guns and one on total control. You two just have different definitions.

We already have gun control. There are thousands of laws already on the books, which if enforced, would solve most of the "gun problem".
Unfortunately, whether lack of interest or lack of funding, they are not. :(

I don't advocate "gun control". I simply don't particularly strongly to the current Federal law on who may possess a handgun: over 21 and non-ex-felon.

At the same time, I wouldn't particularly object to removing the restriction for ex-felons (except when it has been imposed as a condition of parole). I don't object to the law forbidding children to posess handguns other than under the currently provided conditions of adult supervision, but if you call that "gun control" then you're using the term in a highly unconventional way; children are not allowed to posess alcohol or buy tobacco but nobody calles that "prohibition".

Or you're trolling. Again.

Now quit your blustering and post your cite where I said "all* firearms posession reduces crime...your continued failure to do so will be a tacit admission that you deliberately misquoted me again.

Your attitude seems to meet the definition.


So kindly focus your legal attention on people who use weapons illegally.

Ah we're back to the old "prove you need it" argument again; I'm not going there. Without proving I need a fire extinguisher or a smoke alarm, I have them both because they are a sensible precaution in my judgement. So is exercising my right to carry arms for defense of myself and others, as the law clearly permits.

Why do *you* feel the need to disarm me? Are you projecting onto others your own fear that you can't control your anger, as your example suggests?

Pot calling the kettle black...

What? How have I even gotten close to any of those definitions? I just said some people with guns scare me, that is not an uncontrollable, irrational, and persistent fear. Stop making judgment about people because it is wrong.

Wouldn't that be easier? If you can tell me a way to be able to solely focus on people that use weapons illegally I will be all ears.

Why can't I drive drunk, I want to excersise my right to be able to drive drunk but people are taking right that away from me?

I can control my own anger perfectly fine, its just others that I cannot control. As I said many times before but you keep to seem ignoring this fact, as long as you are trained I have no problem with you owning guns.

Then who do you want to disarm & how?
I think that is the issue.

Oh, is that your judgement? :-)

But you insist I leave them at home?

I would suggest actually enforcing the laws against ag assault, armed robbery and related offenses. Instead of the revolving door currently operated by most urban areas.

I'd also be in favor of legalizing all drugs and allowing Darwin to sort things out. But my sense is that that proposal is *way* ouside the current Overton window.

You claim to have a right to drive drunk? Can you cite a basis for that right?

Gun Control is restrictions on Nothing unconventional about it. That has always been called gun control. MaggieL says she is opposed to gun control when just yesterday, MaggieL approved of gun control.

So how do we reconcile MaggieL's opposition with when she posted yesterday? Apparently MaggieL wants us to believe that Rush Limbaugh lie that gun control means removing all guns. Classic fear tactics? Apparently MaggieL has a Rush Limbaugh interpretation.

When confronted to provide facts and details, well, MaggieL really does approve of gun control. It is the expression (a phrase hyped as evil in Rush Limbaugh propaganda) that she fears.

MaggieL approves of gun control. She approves of restrictions on 155 mm howitzers. She does not approve of "posession of firearms by those not legally qualiied to posess them". And she admits to all this while kicking and screaming - pretending to be opposed. It is called gun control not matter how she denies the phrase. MaggieL has approved of 'gun control' – once we eliminate hype and fear from Rush Limbaugh lies and propaganda.

Sure, I, probably like Maggie, approve of Gun Control... just less than we have today.

Sounds like an arms race to me. Something one of your presidents worked very hard to stop a couple of decades ago.

I only want the guns I have, which are not many... just don't want any damn restrictions on my rights to them now or in the future.

Quoted out of context, tw. You really are pathetic.

I didn't say I "approved of gun control". My words that you quoted were from my enumeration of why such gang bangers are in violation of current law...which context of course you conveniently trimmed off. I was not offering support for those laws.

So you stand convicted. Again.

The gang-bangers shouldn't even be on the street--not for "gun posession", but for assault and robbery and other crimes-- but liberal urban municipal governments are unwilling to keep them locked up, so they're soon out and killing each other (on the rare occasion when they're able placed accurate fire, and killing bystanders otherwise).

No, but I've come closer than I'd ever like, considering it might be a present possibility that I'd have to cap a roomie who was going crazy. Didn't like it. Really didn't like it. :thepain:

There was a hollow-core door between me and Crazy Neil the Roomie, acting -- well, living up to that name. If he'd started kicking that door in...

Some months earlier, he'd suggested he'd like to buy one of my guns -- not being Army- nor Marine-trained he didn't say rifle or pistol. Wasn't much likelihood a cokehead like Crazy Neil would have ever been either, really. I didn't take him up on the idea.

Then he committed what I suppose was simple assault -- on the person of the mayor of Laurel, Maryland. He got brought home in squad cars a couple of times, separately from this, having made himself an absolute plague to a couple of different police departments, though I never knew the details.

Not too long after that, Crazy Neil was prevailed upon to check himself in to Saint Elizabeth's -- the Washington DC-area mental-hygiene hospital. This disembarrassed me and a couple other roomies of a real pest. Crazy people with keys to your place ain't a good thing.

This is usually, if seldom consciously, the motivation behind the anti-self-defense lobby. It would seem they haven't the emotional resources for self-control the gun people do. It really doesn't take a lot to elicit a hysterical reaction here, and that is, in a rather quiet way, what we are seeing.

NRA'ers wouldn't disagree that this lot could really use therapy. These are passionately wedded to the unreal, and at this time, the pro-self-defense and genuinely antigenocide people are rolling this bunch up like a tatty rug.

Again, Yesman, look to the link I posted to the JPFO earlier this thread. You will find complete justification for a full auto weapon over every mantle -- yours too -- therein, in argument that has never been rebutted, not once. I think those guys have happened upon an eternal truth: that armed populations shall not and will not endure genocides; and that its corollary is that the better armed the population, the more remote are the chances that they would ever suffer it.

And I perceive that tw keeps me on Ignore, writing in blissful ignorance on points I've already addressed -- jabber on, you dumb Soviet; the more you talk the better I look. The better I look, the harder sensible people laugh at you.

Crime control, not gun control, tw.