Planetarion Forums - It's Illegal To Defend Yourself.

Leshy · 20 Mar 2003, 00:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Aryn
you still haven't answered my question.

I would investigate. And that doesn't include charging in waving a gun.

Aryn · 20 Mar 2003, 01:08

ok so you go investigate.. unarmed.
that's still forcing a confrontation isn't it? (depending on the layout of your house)

now what happens when the ARMED robber sees you?

like i said we can only speculate, but i have a feeling the robber wouldn't just turn and run.

Leshy · 20 Mar 2003, 01:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Aryn
that's still forcing a confrontation isn't it?

It isn't.

Aryn · 20 Mar 2003, 01:13

i said depending on the layout of your house

for example if a window smashed i couldn't leave my room without being seen.
i don't have a phone in my room (unless i'm lucky and i've got my cellphone)

depending on how much of a chicken the guy is, letting him know there's someone else in the house MAY make him run away. or he'll come find me and kill/beat me up.

Leshy · 20 Mar 2003, 01:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Aryn
letting him know there's someone else in the house MAY make him run away. or he'll come find me and kill/beat me up.

If he does come into the room to kill you, you always have the option of shooting him. But at least you won't be the one having forced him into a situation where someone had to die, nor would you have to wonder about his intentions.

That is assuming that he doesn't just get out, something which is equally or even more likely to happen.

QazokRouge5 · 20 Mar 2003, 04:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Leshy
If he does come into the room to kill you, you always have the option of shooting him. But at least you won't be the one having forced him into a situation where someone had to die, nor would you have to wonder about his intentions.

That is assuming that he doesn't just get out, something which is equally or even more likely to happen.

Are you on crack?

Or are you one of the people that have never fired a weapon in your life?

Sandsnake · 20 Mar 2003, 04:51

Quote:

Originally posted by Leshy
It isn't.

it sure as hell is. You're saying that for the sake of someone else's life in MY house, I should go unarmed into a potentially life-threatening situation?

He's right, you ARE on crack. Either that or you've never ever had anything even remotely similar happen to you.

Aryn · 20 Mar 2003, 06:20

leshy.. the robber put HIMSELF into the situation by breaking into the house in the first place.

Monkehpimp · 20 Mar 2003, 07:03

Niether of you should have been in the situation where you could get hold of a gun in the first place.

Judge · 20 Mar 2003, 07:18

Just a thought.

If Guns and I mean all Guns were illegal, and it was impossible for anyone to own one, get hold of one or even sniff one, this situation would not arise.

No Guns, no Robber, no death.

MrL_JaKiri · 20 Mar 2003, 07:36

Knives.

Crossbows.

Scoot951 · 20 Mar 2003, 08:10

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge
Just a thought.

If Guns and I mean all Guns were illegal, and it was impossible for anyone to own one, get hold of one or even sniff one, this situation would not arise.

No Guns, no Robber, no death.

You don't seriously believe that do you? You can be sure I'd grab the longest kitchen knife I had.

Leshy · 20 Mar 2003, 11:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandsnake
I should go unarmed into a potentially life-threatening situation?

Maybe if a situation is that life-threatening, you shouldn't go into it in the first place.

Judge · 20 Mar 2003, 13:12

Quote:

Originally posted by Scoot951
You don't seriously believe that do you? You can be sure I'd grab the longest kitchen knife I had.

As far as Guns are concerned, yes I do believe that they should not be generally available.

As for knives well that is a horse of a different colour

Radical Edward · 20 Mar 2003, 13:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge
Just a thought.

If Guns and I mean all Guns were illegal, and it was impossible for anyone to own one, get hold of one or even sniff one, this situation would not arise.

No Guns, no Robber, no death.

this is why there are no gun deaths at all in the UK.

Dante Hicks · 20 Mar 2003, 13:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge
If Guns and I mean all Guns were illegal, and it was impossible for anyone to own one, get hold of one or even sniff one, this situation would not arise.

If we're having fantasies about a wonderful worlds with no guns, why not just wish for a world with no violence?

Knight Theamion · 20 Mar 2003, 13:41

Quote:

Originally posted by NEWSBOT3
im sick of all you pissy liberals lately.

HELLO. ****WITS. BREAKING INTO SOMEONES HOUSE IS A CRIME.
NO DOUBT TO FEED HIS POT ADDICTION WHICH YOU ALL APPROVE OF AS WELL.

weed is hardly addictive.

General Geiger · 20 Mar 2003, 14:12

I haven't had time to read all of this. This is my feelings, and thoughts on the first 120-odd posts.

In terms of whether I'd have done the same thing - yes, I would have done, most certainly. If someone raised a shotgun at me, and I had a pistol, I would shoot them in the most easily-targetable part of their body until the shotgun was no longer aimed at me or my ammunition ran out. Then I would plead self-defence to the police.

Whether this is a good or right thing, however, is a quite a different question. The arguments regarding gun control, ethics, and law are, as we've seen here, long and complex, and as good as unanswerable. I hope that, one way or another, you can put this ghastly event behind you. It's as good as certain that you won't be charged; as said, no jury would convict you. Get on with life. That's the only, rather obvious, advice that I have for you.

It's another sad example of the utter lack of gun control in the United States. If no one had had guns, he might not have done it; or, if he had, he might have had a baseball bat or a knife. He might have run away when he detected a human presence, or he might have beaten the **** out of you and finished burgling your house. Either way, no one would have died. If - say if gun control in the USA was better but not good - he had been the only person carrying a gun and had detected your presence, he might have threatened you into a corner and then continued, or might have run away. It's impossible to say. I appreciate fully the futility of dwelling on what might have gone differently. I do so merely because of my own useless tendency towards conjecture. Please be tolerant.

It is I feel interesting to look at this in a historical context. The Right to Bear Arms, as per the 14th amendment, was originally intended to aid the prevention of tyranny. The Thirteen Colonies wanted no repetition of the dictatorship they were placed under by Britain prior to the War of Independence. If such a situation should somehow arise, through the mesh of constitutional constraints, checks and balances, that prevent that sort of thing, then as a last resort the people would be able to act as a militia, to overthrow those in power. Obviously this situation is no longer relevant; the Right to Bear Arms is a throwback from a completely different era, kept in place, as someone has already said, by a bunch of right-wing extremists who claim not to trust the government, but, more importantly, want to remain able to kill small animals for fun. It's absurd. If, by some magic, guns in the USA were outlawed now, and orders given for them all to be handed in for melting down, in exchange for cash to their owners, it would indeed take years for any significant decrease in gun crime to occur, but it would happen. Over decades, hundreds of lives would be saved, perhaps thousands.

But I've already noted the uselessness of conjecture. If he had to burgle to get what he wanted, then console yourself with the fact that his life was inherently less valuable to society than yours will be anyway. People are not equal. It is merely a vital tenet of the law that they should be regarded as such, to avoid an unfair amount of discrimination. They must be treated as such, but are not. Your life is worth more than his was. Probably you did the world an unpleasant but necessary favour by ending his life.

On a point of curiousity, was the gun aimed at you, or being aimed at you. Was he in the process of turning the gun on you or was the barrel pointed directly at a part of your body when you pulled the trigger?

Dante Hicks · 20 Mar 2003, 15:39

Quote:

Originally posted by General Geiger
If, by some magic, guns in the USA were outlawed now, and orders given for them all to be handed in for melting down, in exchange for cash to their owners, it would indeed take years for any significant decrease in gun crime to occur, but it would happen. Over decades, hundreds of lives would be saved, perhaps thousands.

While we're hypothesising I'd like to guess that if you completley outlawed guns then you'd probably have to kill hundreds of people in order to get their guns. I presume most people who say "You'll only pry my gun away from my cold dead hands" are bluffing, but some must mean it.

I think the idea of having guns to protect you from the government is an interesting one, but I don't think you can either full endorse it or reject it. There's a quote out there along the lines of "You may have a handgun, the state have assault rifles. You may have an assault rifle, they have a tank. You may get a tank, but they've got a B22 Stealth Bomber." which is a glib but partially true observation.

At the same time, would the government introduce fascistic legislation if the populace had guns? There's a wonderful bit in Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States" about a strike. There had been rumours that in this particular strike the bosses would call in strike breakers to beat up the union organisers and those on the picket line. There were rumours flying around that the police would intervene to break up the strike. The striking workers held a march down the main street all carrying their (legally owned) firearms. The bosses made an agreement within days.

There's also an argument that in multi-ethnic state guns might protect one faction from another if one ever captured control of the state (e.g. Yugoslavia). Ultimately though, I would tend to object to this line of thought.

Erosion of our liberty is just that - an erosion. Civil liberties are not done away with in overnight and by the time it occurs it's too late for gun wielding.

Also, most dictatorial regimes have the support (at their inception only perhaps) of a sizable proportion of their population. Would every Jew in pre-NAZI Germany having a gun stopped the Holocaust? It's doubtful, since gun owning non-Jewish Germans would have still had access to the higher capacity for violence. If, as Madison (?) claimed government is there to protect the minority from the majority, what does gun ownership do except for put (potential) power back into a majority?

Ultimately though - guns should be legal because there's no good argument for getting rid of them. You owning a gun in your home (so long as it's well maintained and you're not nuts) does not put me in any risk or danger. Therefore, I cannot justify infringing on your liberty by denying you this.

QazokRouge5 · 21 Mar 2003, 03:35

You say "In an Ideal world, guns would not exist."

I say, "In an Ideal world, people wouldn't break into a 16 year old's house.

You say "Maybe he didn't intend on shooting, or didn't intend on doing harm."

I say, "Then the man shouldn't have brought a shotgun. He would have done better to knock on my front door and point a finger at me."

You say, "You've killed a man. Your evil. You should feel like ****."

I say, "Do you think it was EASY killling that man? Do you not think that I haven't relived it every time I've gone to sleep in the last few days? DO you think that I didn't realize what I was getting myself into the second I got that gun?"

It's time for people to wake up. It's time to stop asking "what if" and start standing up for yourselvs.

Only then, will you be truly content in your life. I have had to live with what I have done, for the last week. It wil haunt me for the rest of my life. But at least I can say that I'm living to live with it.

-Qazok

P.S. Leshy, if you ever call me a duck again, I'll cut off your balls.

Leshy · 21 Mar 2003, 03:52

Quote:

Originally posted by QazokRouge5
P.S. Leshy, if you ever call me a duck again, I'll cut off your balls.

You really can't read, can you?

cnaw · 21 Mar 2003, 04:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge
Just a thought.

If Guns and I mean all Guns were illegal, and it was impossible for anyone to own one, get hold of one or even sniff one, this situation would not arise.

No Guns, no Robber, no death.

*giggle* You'd have to make it impossible for peeps to build zip guns *giggle*

Nodrog · 21 Mar 2003, 05:53

Quote:

Originally posted by Dante Hicks
I think the idea of having guns to protect you from the government is an interesting one, but I don't think you can either full endorse it or reject it. There's a quote out there along the lines of "You may have a handgun, the state have assault rifles. You may have an assault rifle, they have a tank. You may get a tank, but they've got a B22 Stealth Bomber." which is a glib but partially true observation.

It may be true, but its completely irrelevant. The whole "guns protect us from an oppressive government" argument is one of the most idealistic and naive ideas ive ever heard. Almost every nation of people who have been "oppressed" are oppressed by their own consent, or at least by the consent of the majority. The "guns of the US" havent protected them against drug laws, they havent protected them against the virtual elimination of private property, they havent protected them against the Patriot act, and they certianly didnt protect them during "prohibition". I'd struggle to name 5 oppressive governments in the history of humanity who have ruled against the explicit will of the majority of the populace, and the US certainly wouldnt be one of them.

Sandsnake · 21 Mar 2003, 06:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Leshy
Maybe if a situation is that life-threatening, you shouldn't go into it in the first place.

if it's in my house, I didn't exactly "go into it" now did I?

Quote:

Originally posted by Radical Edward
this is why there are no gun deaths at all in the UK.

This is incorrect. there were over 680 gun casualties in 2002 for the UK.

Nodrog · 21 Mar 2003, 06:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandsnake
i This is incorrect. there were over 680 gun casualties in 2002 for the UK.

I think he was being sarcastic (although as I've said before, the "gun death" figure for a country is almost as irrelevant as the "amount of clouds that pass over it in the average day" when it comes to any discussion about crime)

Sandsnake · 21 Mar 2003, 06:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Nodrog
I think he was being sarcastic (although as I've said before, the "gun death" figure for a country is almost as irrelevant as the "amount of clouds that pass over it in the average day" when it comes to any discussion about crime)

never know around here, and I agree.

Leshy · 21 Mar 2003, 13:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandsnake
if it's in my house, I didn't exactly "go into it" now did I?

So if a gang of NINJA'S with M-16 rifles sets up a trap in your kitchen, you can't "walk into it" because it's your house?

Monkehpimp · 21 Mar 2003, 13:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandsnake

This is incorrect. there were over 680 gun casualties in 2002 for the UK.

compared to nearly 13000 in the US....

think there might be a slight gun issue in the states then?

MrL_JaKiri · 21 Mar 2003, 13:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Monkehpimp
compared to nearly 13000 in the US....

think there might be a slight gun issue in the states then?

Not really.

Compare the UK figures with switzerland or canada, with their gun control laws.

Also, bear in mind that the US is 6x the size of the UK, and the figure is a 'mere' 12x larger.

Radical Edward · 21 Mar 2003, 13:32

also, rather interestingly gun crime has been on the rise since Guns were banned after Dunblane.

Judge · 21 Mar 2003, 18:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Dante Hicks
If we're having fantasies about a wonderful worlds with no guns, why not just wish for a world with no violence?

Ok.

cnaw · 21 Mar 2003, 21:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Dante Hicks
If we're having fantasies about a wonderful worlds with no guns, why not just wish for a world with no violence?

can we have free love too?

Phang · 21 Mar 2003, 21:55

Quote:

Originally posted by Radical Edward
also, rather interestingly gun crime has been on the rise since Guns were banned after Dunblane.

ditto, "black" gun culture and the mid-90's.

Judge · 22 Mar 2003, 04:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Radical Edward
also, rather interestingly gun crime has been on the rise since Guns were banned after Dunblane.

evidence?

Not that it matters a lot, who gives a f**k if one lot of criminals are killing another?

Sub · 22 Mar 2003, 13:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Judge
evidence?

Not that it matters a lot, who gives a f**k if one lot of criminals are killing another?

Exactly. I find it outrageous that the government gives criminals the right to live. They have wronged society, and should be isolated from it for the rest of their lives. To be honest, I think we should encourage criminals to kill each other - afterall they clearly don't do anything for society, and hence don't deserve to live. A step further would be to just forego trials altogether and just lock up people straight away. After all, many guilty men can walk free because of their lawyers - this is a travesty of justice. If we locked people up without trial, then I think it's obvious to everyone that we would certainly get the criminals. Crime would plummet. To deny this would be ignorant.

Eddie · 22 Mar 2003, 14:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Sandsnake
This is incorrect. there were over 680 gun casualties in 2002 for the UK.

Unless you've got sources that back this up, adding an extra zero doesn't actually make something true.

I don't have any 2002 figures, but deaths through guns in the UK was rising by about two or three each year through the 1990s, ending with 52 gun deaths in 1999. Now, I somehow find it somehow to believe that this has gone up twice times in three years, so I'm guessing 68 was actually the number you were looking for.

Dante Hicks · 22 Mar 2003, 14:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Eddie
I don't have any 2002 figures, but deaths through guns in the UK was rising by about two or three each year through the 1990s, ending with 52 gun deaths in 1999.

He said gun casualties, not gun deaths. Two different things.

Eddie · 22 Mar 2003, 14:39

Fair enough. Comparing that with the 13,000 US deaths isn't really the fairest of statistics though.

cnaw · 23 Mar 2003, 23:34

Quote:

Originally posted by Eddie
Fair enough. Comparing that with the 13,000 US deaths isn't really the fairest of statistics though.

Not that it matters but about 47-58% (i have seen all sort of numbers in this range) of gun deaths in the US are a result of suicide. ..

Amoril · 24 Mar 2003, 00:22

GUNS DONT KILL PEOPLE - LOSS OF BLOOD AND CRITICAL TRAUMA OF VITAL ORGANS DUE TO THE IMAPACT OF A PIECE OF LEAD TRAVELLING AT HIGH VELOCITY DOES!

QazokRouge5 · 28 May 2003, 20:31

Quote:

Originally posted by Eddie
Unless you've got sources that back this up, adding an extra zero doesn't actually make something true.

I don't have any 2002 figures, but deaths through guns in the UK was rising by about two or three each year through the 1990s, ending with 52 gun deaths in 1999. Now, I somehow find it somehow to believe that this has gone up twice times in three years, so I'm guessing 68 was actually the number you were looking for.

(Sorry to pull this old thread up... but its been a while since i read it, and I couldnt resist.)

Let it be noted that there is a distinct difference between how many gun deaths there are in the U.K. because the King or Queen says so, than there is in actuality.

MrL_JaKiri · 28 May 2003, 20:33

Quote:

Originally posted by QazokRouge5
(Sorry to pull this old thread up... but its been a while since i read it, and I couldnt resist.)

Let it be noted that there is a distinct difference between how many gun deaths there are in the U.K. because the King or Queen says so, than there is in actuality.

That's what the police/coroners say you ****ing moron.