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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
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It is easier to make and distribute drugs, it is not a valid comparison.
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On July 23 2012 05:14 valium wrote:
It is easier to make and distribute drugs, it is not a valid comparison.
I giggled a lot at how slow valium was to respond to the original comparison.
PS you are my favorite color.
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.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well.
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On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well.
Cops are well known for not having the greatest accuracy. Not to mention if I pull a rifle vs his handgun I'm gonna win. Plenty of people shoot cops every year and win. Just sayin.
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On July 23 2012 05:22 Infernal_dream wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. Cops are well known for not having the greatest accuracy. Not to mention if I pull a rifle vs his handgun I'm gonna win. Plenty of people shoot cops every year and win. Just sayin.
Cops are well known for their inaccuracy in movies and television. Not to mention they pretty much have rifles and shotguns in almost every jursidiction. Plenty of cops shoot people every year and win.
But seriously, did you watch the video? It'd be easier to siege a police station than shoot a cop there and win.
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On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement.
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On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement.
If EVERY single US non military citizen decided to try and overthrow the government they would lose in less than a month and do nearly no damage. Your gun provides you ZERO defense against tyranny. When second amendment to US Constitution it did because the military used the same weapons as the civilians so it wasnt unrealistic for a overthrow to be possible but that really isnt the case anymore.
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On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement.
First off, I didn't read the block quote. The best way to make a point is never to let other people make the most verbose point ever made in your stead. I never said turn in your guns. I said good luck firing on police officers. They outnumber you hundreds of thousands, or millions, to one, and they are just as well armed as any criminal.
Unless you live in the backwoods of Alabama, in which case, you could probably do it easily. Then again in the backwoods of Alabama the cops could kill you and no one would ever know either.
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On July 23 2012 05:29 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. If EVERY single US non military citizen decided to try and overthrow the government they would lose in less than a month and do nearly no damage. Your gun provides you ZERO defense against tyranny. When second amendment to US Constitution it did because the military used the same weapons as the civilians so it wasnt unrealistic for a overthrow to be possible but that really isnt the case anymore.
Pretty much. If the government really wanted to kill you, you wouldn't even know it happened until the flames from the drone missile hit you.
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On July 23 2012 04:53 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 04:40 StarStrider wrote:On July 23 2012 04:23 Nouar wrote:On July 22 2012 23:45 StarStrider wrote:On July 22 2012 22:01 TGalore wrote:On July 22 2012 20:03 StarStrider wrote:
A few points regarding the stance that retaliatory fire would do nothing or would 'make things worse':
-People insisting that regular citizens with proper training would by default be less accurate than a combat trained soldier or police officer is simply a false assertion. The assertion that they may react in more of a panic or adrenaline state/tunnel vision is true, but does this mean they would just close their eyes and start shooting randomly and hope they hit the bad guy and no one else? HARDLY.
-Most people would agree with you that in the darkness, smoke, and chaos, hitting the face would be unlikely from more than 15 feet. Unlikely does not mean impossible. But that also said, you need to do research on the impact a 9mm (most common CCW caliber) can have on the human body even through a kevlar vest. Your stance asserts this guy was basically invincible. He had a tac vest on. He may have had other pieces of armor on. I promise you he wasn't wearing an EOD type suit though. He wasn't.
-The face is not the only vulnerable area on this guy's body. Considering less than perfect conditions for our defender(s), a stray bullet could easily tag his arms, hands, elbows, legs, feet, etc. The assertion that bullets could not likely find their way into vulnerable locations is hard to believe.
-The argument that defenders would just aim for center body mass and wouldn't realize he was wearing armor has been proven incorrect, as every eyewitness knew he was armored even before he started shooting. Even so, see above and research how much effect even a 9mil has in direct impact even on center mass on body armor.
-Many with your point of view also like to paint out the scenario that we are neccesarily talking about a single concealed carry defender vs this heavily armed gunman. What if there were 5? It is simple wolfpack instinct to know that when he turns to fire at the first guy who shoots at him, that is when you take your shot. You don't need combat training to recognize this.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun (who has likely trained at a range a few times if he has a CCW permit) are much less than the odds of that gunman killing every person in the theater if no one stops him.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun are signifcantly reduced because everyone is already on the floor when the gas grenades popped. Everyone is already in the most ideal position not to get hit. The likelyhood that someone by random chance is going to jump up and accidentally get in your line of fire is slim.
-What percentage of patrons that night were likely CCW permit holders? Well, based on the average age of the audience at a midnight showing for Batman, I'd say it was pretty slim at ANY theater, even those in Texas and Mississippi. The assertion that someone in there had a personal protection firearm and didn't use it is unfounded and does nothing for this discussion.
-The likelihood of the citizen defender being shot and killed in no way diminishes the fact that they are more likely to stop him by actually trying than by giving up and praying they don't get killed, like everyone else who didn't bring a firearm.
-83 people were shot. If you admit the number shot by a citizen defender in the chaos would be significantly less than that number, then you really have no case.
-The good guys are the ones shooting at the bad guy in the mask and body armor. Step 1: Shoot at the guy in the mask with the AR. Step 2: Don't shoot at the people in the theater seats who are shooting at the armored guy. Trying to say that multiple people with guns wouldn't realize who the fuck to shoot at is just the most stupid assertion I've ever heard.
And that is all just specific points about this incident. Concerning the debate on whether having CCW permit citizens around in other crimes: Given most criminal gunmen do not use body armor, I'd increase the likelyhood of a citizen defender being able to do something to stop them in any other given situation tenfold. Arguments like these are tantamount to blaming the victims for not being armed, in my opinion, and are revolting. It's like blaming a woman for being raped for either not having a weapon to defend herself or "asking for it." What you're asserting here is that some of these people are dead because they chose not to carry a loaded weapon with them into a crowded, closed space full of children and families. It is not nor should it ever be ANY civilian's -responsibility- to be armed. Your post illustrates a common fantasy that so many who own guns seem to have, and that is that they are looking for an opportunity to be a "hero" by killing someone. They see themselves as reacting calmly, with perfect aim, against a more heavily armed assailant in a sudden high stress situation and saving a lot more lives than were lost. But that NEVER happens. It never has in any of the awful mass shootings in our country's history. Relaxed gun laws didn't help during Columbine or Virginia Tech. Hell, more people died at Fort Hood, a military base full of trained soldiers, than in Colorado. The majority of people don't want to carry guns and shouldn't have their safety and interests held hostage by a small percentage of the population that envisions themselves as moonlight superheroes. If those who were pro-gun were truly interested in reducing violence and gun crime rates, then they wouldn't be against so many of the gun safety and anti-proliferation laws that have been attempted to be passed. Would we have a lot less gun crime if all ammunition was serially coded and traceable through a federal database? Absolutely. Would fewer people have died this past week if this man wasn't able to obtain an automatic military assault rifle and instead only had legal access to handguns? More than likely. Should he have been able to buy FOUR GUNS in recent months (really, do you need more than one to defend yourself?) and SIX THOUSAND ROUNDS of ammunition over the INTERNET? I don't think so, but the NRA does and also thinks assault weapons, rampant untracked ammunition, and unlimited guns among the common population is a good idea. It makes me sick. That is a complete distortion. It is a total red herring. It is a complete jump in logic to say that because I claim people would have a better chance of defending themselves if armed than if unarmed, that I am somehow saying they deserve it for not being armed, or that their safety would have been guaranteed. I simply make the assertion that there is a slight chance that it could have been ended before 83 people were shot. Not even likely. Just possible. That possibility is worth carrying. I don't expect everyone to, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't and say 'well when you get raped or mugged, don't cry about it because I warned you'. I'm saying 'give yourself the best chance imo, even if it is a slim one.' How do you know? How many cases are there of killers who got taken out by an armed citizen before they had a chance to kill, that you might just not know about or never heard of because they didn't go national? You, in your infinite knowledge, have studied criminal cases for years and know this to be a fact? You have brought up several cases of mass murder where a citizen did not happen to act. That's it. What does that do for your case? Does this prove that a citizen with a gun could do nothing, because no citizen did anything? Why do you assume that there were concealed carry citizens there but they failed to act or failed to fire back before getting killed? If there were none there, doesn't this hurt, not help your argument? Does it prove that they tried to act but got taken out? How many corpses have we found with guns in their hands or on their person in these massacres? You don't know details like this. You don't know shit. But it's easy to act like you do on an internet forum, therefore everyone is an expert. You generalize and hypothesize. People like you want to marginalize the reality that real citizens with real skills at pointing and shooting could possibly make a difference in these scenarios by painting them out to be living out heroic fantasies from a comic book or a movie. Fuck you. This is real life. It's not about pride or glory or living out some fantasy. It's about possibly saving lives. How dare you marginalize that. You're the sick one friend. Not everyone thinks in terms of a fucking video game, and not everyone thinks as shallowly about it as you do or seem to imagine. I guess every cop just wants to be Magnum PI and every firefighter just wants to be Third Watch. They do it for the medals and ceremonies right? Please get your head out of your ass. For every mass murder you mentioned where no one stopped them with a firearm, I can link you to HUNDREDS of events where gun armed assailants were taken down citizens. Were these assailants intent on killing? How do we know they were going to murder people? Does it matter when you are threatened with a gun? The armed citizens never gave them a chance to find out. Thank god. Is this debate about whether citizens should carry, or whether AR's and ammo should be more strictly controlled? Why do you assume everyone on the pro-gun side wants guns to be free and available for all no matter who they are, what their background, or what kind of gun it is? I dare you to find a single pro-gun person in this thread who is opposed to background checks, psych checks, and mandatory handling and safety courses for all would be gun owners. If they are, they are just an idiot who should be ignored anyway because they are out of touch with reality. You are ignoring a few things. Armed robbery isn't usually equal to death sentence for one. Then, OK, the "bad guy" died. It's still a death. This guy might have, might have not shot, the weapon might have been fake, you might be dead, some lives have been saved, others have been lost. A robber would be far less inclined to shoot if his opponent didn't have a weapon, AND there would be a lot less armed robberies or any other offense with a gun if guns were more controlled/forbidden. Lastly, for a life truly saved, how many are lost by a misunderstanding, and a failed estimation of danger from the "righteous" guy ? I can link you to hundreds of those, too. And the life of an innocent is NEVER, EVER worth whatever you oppose it. You're not *wrong*, you just conveniently ignore a whole side of the problem, that is to say that not everybody should be a hero, because they were not TRAINED to do so and are bound to take bad decisions quite often. With firearms, these bad decisions imply deathes. Wrong ones. Addressing these points in reverse: I don't ignore those problems, I just think they are rare and signifcantly less common than you believe. I would contend that the numbers of outright gun kills that could be or are prevented or dissuaded by armed citizen defenders (or would never occur in the first place with the knowledge that so many people might be armed) would be vastly higher than accidental discharge deaths or innocents hit by well-meaning defenders, which would be worth it would you agree? Can you disprove this assertion? Or is it just my opinion vs yours? And I will never ever shed one tear for any man with malicious intent injured or killed when he is threatening to kill another by pointing a gun at them...there is no might have when it comes to this situation. The Police do the same thing, why is it ok for them to make that judgement and not a citizen, they are just men with guns after all in the end, and protectors of good against evil per se, same as any other man operating in defense of citizens. He will be charged with manslaughter if he was in the wrong. If an armed assailant gets shot, I am not going to feel bad for them, no matter if they were planning on using it or not (or if they were just using a fake). They deserve every amount of pain or death they receive. You can't tell me they can threaten innocent lives yet be shown mercy in one sentence then say innocent lives at risk are a reason for a good guy citizen not to come to their aid and take the shot. Then explain to me why and how most armies in the world are componsed of soldiers who have EXTENSIVE training and lessons on when, how, and what they incur if they shoot their weapon wrongly. That's because an innocent life is worth everything, even to the point of letting someone who would deserve to die alive, when in doubt. And citizens with no clue can fire at will ?.... And again, both people having a gun means there is really often a dead people there. Most robbers are not killers. But being confronted to someone who has a gun, and wants to defend himself, mean there is a really high chance one of them will end up dead. HOW IS THAT GOOD ? You might find it cowardly, but do you really prefer dying instead of just being robbed ? I'm a soldier. I know how to defend myself, how to attack, disable someone, you name it. I would NOT use these skills, unless my life (or my family) are in immediate danger. Robbers are "forced" to be ready to kill in order to rob in your country. They don't in mine. Why are there less dead people ? Because either both don't have weapon, or only the robber has. Cases of deathes by firearms are extremely rare here, barring the mafia killing each others. And we don't have a higher rob rate either. How do we do it ? Do we just die, are we afraid of not defending ourselves ? No, most thugs just don't have a weapon. You want to defend yourself, it's a good idea, but it's escalating. Robbers WILL rob. And people WILL die. You are advocating the death penalty for people wielding fake weapons to rob a hundred dollars..... Are you fucking SERIOUS ? The cops having lax rules on opening fire is disturbing me greatly, too, but you HAVE to realise that you are afraid of not being able to defend BECAUSE thugs have guns. Why do they have guns ? Because they need to, since everyone has one. It's a circle very difficult to get out of. You are knee-deep in it, so your beliefs are radically different than most other countries, since we don't have that problem. It's a society matter, it doesn't mean you're right. This thread is not about "should US citizens have weapons to defend themselves since all thugs have them", but "should citizens, wherever they are, have the right to freely carry guns." there are all kind of societies here. Yours need weapons, sadly, but it's not a fatality and you should open your views to other types of society. Having a gun mostly increases the chance you will have to kill someone, or be killed, instead of increasing your chances to survive.
You're starting with the false assumption that only military and police training can provide training competence and knowledge and safety and gravity of what it means to fire a gun. Military specifically learns combat tactics, positioning, etc, but there is extensive training for normal citizens here when it comes to gun safety and how to react in certain situations. They can even go to 'citizen training facilities' etc, where they have different ranges for urban training. Some states require a certain amount of training to carry: I think they all should.
You're also implying that most people who are threatened are going to shoot to kill every time. As I have stated many times, most of the time the threat of a gun is enough of a deterrant. Sometimes it might take a warning shot to prove you're serious. Rarely ever will it take you shooting them, unless they have a death wish. There aren't very many criminals when it comes down to it who will shoot at cops. Same logic applies. Most don't want to go away for murder or get killed, they'd rather give up and accept the consequences.
Further, whether you acknowledge it or not, trained shooters know how to shoot to disable without shooting to kill. While no man should pull the trigger without accepting the person on the end may die, there are ways to shoot that are much less deadly.
It's not about the severity of their crime. It's about not knowing what they will do with a firearm. I am not advocating shooting who is not armed, that would be evil, and a quick way to get charged with murder or manslaughter (Zimmerman). Like you, I would only shoot if my life or one around me could possibly be in danger. And if a thug is pointing a gun, I'm not going to try to figure out whether it's a fake or is rusted shut or w/e. I'm going to act.
In your country, you say most thugs don't have a weapon. So there is no need for you to have one. I get it. Your replaceable, insured property is not worth getting into a confrontation with someone with a weapon. I get that too. But it doesn't matter, weapon or no, you would fight for your life or your family's life am I right?
Well, alot of thugs here DO have weapons. As long as that is the case, I will have a gun, because I want to be able to defend my family if the time comes. And it happens here more often than you would think.
I'm not advocating that at all. You're exaggerating it to make me look evil. I don't advocate that you can just execute anyone you want just because they rob you or hit you or break in to rape your wife.
I'm advocating that someone can use a firearm to defend themselves if someone else threatens them with a deadly weapon, whether its real or they intend to kill, or not. Being threatened with a gun = being threatened with instant death, no one should take a chance on that. Am I saying you pull out a gun and shoot them immediately? Am I saying they deserve to die? No. No I'm not. Many shots will wound and not kill anyway.
But I feel no sympathy for them if they get shot, because they brought it upon themselves by threatening with a deadly weapon. You shouldn't either. It's how life works when it's kill or be killed, and you can't know that it's not. There is no time for the police.
You're right that it is sad our society has to be this way, it would be great if we could trust that there aren't any more guns out there in thug's hands, but that's not gonna happen overnight, it is the way it is, and you saying it's bad or your country's situation is better won't change a damn thing. If you come up with a solution, let me know.
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On July 23 2012 04:58 OrchidThief wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 04:53 StarStrider wrote:On July 23 2012 04:48 OrchidThief wrote:On July 23 2012 04:40 Valentine wrote:On July 23 2012 04:34 fumikey wrote:
Obviously not.
There is only one country with an extremely large crime rate that is stupid enough to believe if everyone owned a gun crime will subside. Given some European countries have similar beliefs, they also have exponentially less criminals among their streets.
Ever hear the theory "If there were no armies, there could be no war"? I think it relates closely with firearms as well. It's not like this country can go back on its previous 200 years of gun ownership. Guns are already every-fucking-where and the support for keeping them is high because a lot of people: -Like guns -Hunt -Want protection It's unfortunate, but the situation in the US is a little different due to the sheer amount of guns of all sorts that are all over the country already. I don't see how this invalidates efforts towards more gun control. This thread is kind of funny, at this point it has come full circle and is mostly just discussing the same things that was discussed in the first 15 pages. You can't just nullify 200 years of history certainly, but if there was a desire for change you could do it in small steps. A lot of people liking guns isn't really a valid reason for keeping them around. They like guns because they're easily available/ingrained in culture, not vise versa. If they were a billion times harder to obtain, people wouldn't see them as valid hobbies. In any case, it's moot, because of how insignificant sports/hobby guns are in a discussion on gun control. I don't think he was using 'like guns' as a justification, nor would most, its just that as you said, theyre easily available and engrained in culture therefore they like them as a hobby or for the benefits they provide. It just IS that way, maybe it shoudn't be, but it's not likely to change any time soon. So you're saying at this point there's no point in trying to increase gun control because there's so many of them? Isn't that a bit of a shortsighted philosophy? I mean even the greatest journey starts with a single step.
Nope. Not saying that. I'm all for gun control that keeps it out of the hands of psychos and criminals. Not for gun control that keeps it out of the hands of deserving level headed people. Lets ratchet up the background checks and testing and training.
Increasing gun control and working toward removing all guns from society are wildly different things.
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On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement.
Another problem with claiming that the police force could become a tyrant is that you are applying tyranny to the whole of the police force. Like any other collection of people, they are individuals which make up a collective. One can be bad, while the others are not. One police officer going on a rampage does not make the other 750,000 police officers tyrants.
You can't simply strip almost a million people of all logic, reasoning, and human qualities, and then apply to them all the same negative opinion. You seem to like your quotes, so here's a nice one for you:
Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 18 "Of Tyranny", Section 202.
It does not invalidate a senate for a senator to become a tyrant, it simply invalidates the authority of the singular senator.
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On July 23 2012 05:33 Adila wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:29 Adreme wrote:On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. If EVERY single US non military citizen decided to try and overthrow the government they would lose in less than a month and do nearly no damage. Your gun provides you ZERO defense against tyranny. When second amendment to US Constitution it did because the military used the same weapons as the civilians so it wasnt unrealistic for a overthrow to be possible but that really isnt the case anymore. Pretty much. If the government really wanted to kill you, you wouldn't even know it happened until the flames from the drone missile hit you.
You'd have to be pretty damn important to the revolutionary movement to earn your own drone strike. There are a lot of people in this country who wouldn't accept tyranny. I would venture that they well outnumber the number in the police force and military.
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On July 23 2012 05:37 StarStrider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 04:53 Nouar wrote:On July 23 2012 04:40 StarStrider wrote:On July 23 2012 04:23 Nouar wrote:On July 22 2012 23:45 StarStrider wrote:On July 22 2012 22:01 TGalore wrote:On July 22 2012 20:03 StarStrider wrote:
A few points regarding the stance that retaliatory fire would do nothing or would 'make things worse':
-People insisting that regular citizens with proper training would by default be less accurate than a combat trained soldier or police officer is simply a false assertion. The assertion that they may react in more of a panic or adrenaline state/tunnel vision is true, but does this mean they would just close their eyes and start shooting randomly and hope they hit the bad guy and no one else? HARDLY.
-Most people would agree with you that in the darkness, smoke, and chaos, hitting the face would be unlikely from more than 15 feet. Unlikely does not mean impossible. But that also said, you need to do research on the impact a 9mm (most common CCW caliber) can have on the human body even through a kevlar vest. Your stance asserts this guy was basically invincible. He had a tac vest on. He may have had other pieces of armor on. I promise you he wasn't wearing an EOD type suit though. He wasn't.
-The face is not the only vulnerable area on this guy's body. Considering less than perfect conditions for our defender(s), a stray bullet could easily tag his arms, hands, elbows, legs, feet, etc. The assertion that bullets could not likely find their way into vulnerable locations is hard to believe.
-The argument that defenders would just aim for center body mass and wouldn't realize he was wearing armor has been proven incorrect, as every eyewitness knew he was armored even before he started shooting. Even so, see above and research how much effect even a 9mil has in direct impact even on center mass on body armor.
-Many with your point of view also like to paint out the scenario that we are neccesarily talking about a single concealed carry defender vs this heavily armed gunman. What if there were 5? It is simple wolfpack instinct to know that when he turns to fire at the first guy who shoots at him, that is when you take your shot. You don't need combat training to recognize this.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun (who has likely trained at a range a few times if he has a CCW permit) are much less than the odds of that gunman killing every person in the theater if no one stops him.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun are signifcantly reduced because everyone is already on the floor when the gas grenades popped. Everyone is already in the most ideal position not to get hit. The likelyhood that someone by random chance is going to jump up and accidentally get in your line of fire is slim.
-What percentage of patrons that night were likely CCW permit holders? Well, based on the average age of the audience at a midnight showing for Batman, I'd say it was pretty slim at ANY theater, even those in Texas and Mississippi. The assertion that someone in there had a personal protection firearm and didn't use it is unfounded and does nothing for this discussion.
-The likelihood of the citizen defender being shot and killed in no way diminishes the fact that they are more likely to stop him by actually trying than by giving up and praying they don't get killed, like everyone else who didn't bring a firearm.
-83 people were shot. If you admit the number shot by a citizen defender in the chaos would be significantly less than that number, then you really have no case.
-The good guys are the ones shooting at the bad guy in the mask and body armor. Step 1: Shoot at the guy in the mask with the AR. Step 2: Don't shoot at the people in the theater seats who are shooting at the armored guy. Trying to say that multiple people with guns wouldn't realize who the fuck to shoot at is just the most stupid assertion I've ever heard.
And that is all just specific points about this incident. Concerning the debate on whether having CCW permit citizens around in other crimes: Given most criminal gunmen do not use body armor, I'd increase the likelyhood of a citizen defender being able to do something to stop them in any other given situation tenfold. Arguments like these are tantamount to blaming the victims for not being armed, in my opinion, and are revolting. It's like blaming a woman for being raped for either not having a weapon to defend herself or "asking for it." What you're asserting here is that some of these people are dead because they chose not to carry a loaded weapon with them into a crowded, closed space full of children and families. It is not nor should it ever be ANY civilian's -responsibility- to be armed. Your post illustrates a common fantasy that so many who own guns seem to have, and that is that they are looking for an opportunity to be a "hero" by killing someone. They see themselves as reacting calmly, with perfect aim, against a more heavily armed assailant in a sudden high stress situation and saving a lot more lives than were lost. But that NEVER happens. It never has in any of the awful mass shootings in our country's history. Relaxed gun laws didn't help during Columbine or Virginia Tech. Hell, more people died at Fort Hood, a military base full of trained soldiers, than in Colorado. The majority of people don't want to carry guns and shouldn't have their safety and interests held hostage by a small percentage of the population that envisions themselves as moonlight superheroes. If those who were pro-gun were truly interested in reducing violence and gun crime rates, then they wouldn't be against so many of the gun safety and anti-proliferation laws that have been attempted to be passed. Would we have a lot less gun crime if all ammunition was serially coded and traceable through a federal database? Absolutely. Would fewer people have died this past week if this man wasn't able to obtain an automatic military assault rifle and instead only had legal access to handguns? More than likely. Should he have been able to buy FOUR GUNS in recent months (really, do you need more than one to defend yourself?) and SIX THOUSAND ROUNDS of ammunition over the INTERNET? I don't think so, but the NRA does and also thinks assault weapons, rampant untracked ammunition, and unlimited guns among the common population is a good idea. It makes me sick. That is a complete distortion. It is a total red herring. It is a complete jump in logic to say that because I claim people would have a better chance of defending themselves if armed than if unarmed, that I am somehow saying they deserve it for not being armed, or that their safety would have been guaranteed. I simply make the assertion that there is a slight chance that it could have been ended before 83 people were shot. Not even likely. Just possible. That possibility is worth carrying. I don't expect everyone to, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't and say 'well when you get raped or mugged, don't cry about it because I warned you'. I'm saying 'give yourself the best chance imo, even if it is a slim one.' How do you know? How many cases are there of killers who got taken out by an armed citizen before they had a chance to kill, that you might just not know about or never heard of because they didn't go national? You, in your infinite knowledge, have studied criminal cases for years and know this to be a fact? You have brought up several cases of mass murder where a citizen did not happen to act. That's it. What does that do for your case? Does this prove that a citizen with a gun could do nothing, because no citizen did anything? Why do you assume that there were concealed carry citizens there but they failed to act or failed to fire back before getting killed? If there were none there, doesn't this hurt, not help your argument? Does it prove that they tried to act but got taken out? How many corpses have we found with guns in their hands or on their person in these massacres? You don't know details like this. You don't know shit. But it's easy to act like you do on an internet forum, therefore everyone is an expert. You generalize and hypothesize. People like you want to marginalize the reality that real citizens with real skills at pointing and shooting could possibly make a difference in these scenarios by painting them out to be living out heroic fantasies from a comic book or a movie. Fuck you. This is real life. It's not about pride or glory or living out some fantasy. It's about possibly saving lives. How dare you marginalize that. You're the sick one friend. Not everyone thinks in terms of a fucking video game, and not everyone thinks as shallowly about it as you do or seem to imagine. I guess every cop just wants to be Magnum PI and every firefighter just wants to be Third Watch. They do it for the medals and ceremonies right? Please get your head out of your ass. For every mass murder you mentioned where no one stopped them with a firearm, I can link you to HUNDREDS of events where gun armed assailants were taken down citizens. Were these assailants intent on killing? How do we know they were going to murder people? Does it matter when you are threatened with a gun? The armed citizens never gave them a chance to find out. Thank god. Is this debate about whether citizens should carry, or whether AR's and ammo should be more strictly controlled? Why do you assume everyone on the pro-gun side wants guns to be free and available for all no matter who they are, what their background, or what kind of gun it is? I dare you to find a single pro-gun person in this thread who is opposed to background checks, psych checks, and mandatory handling and safety courses for all would be gun owners. If they are, they are just an idiot who should be ignored anyway because they are out of touch with reality. You are ignoring a few things. Armed robbery isn't usually equal to death sentence for one. Then, OK, the "bad guy" died. It's still a death. This guy might have, might have not shot, the weapon might have been fake, you might be dead, some lives have been saved, others have been lost. A robber would be far less inclined to shoot if his opponent didn't have a weapon, AND there would be a lot less armed robberies or any other offense with a gun if guns were more controlled/forbidden. Lastly, for a life truly saved, how many are lost by a misunderstanding, and a failed estimation of danger from the "righteous" guy ? I can link you to hundreds of those, too. And the life of an innocent is NEVER, EVER worth whatever you oppose it. You're not *wrong*, you just conveniently ignore a whole side of the problem, that is to say that not everybody should be a hero, because they were not TRAINED to do so and are bound to take bad decisions quite often. With firearms, these bad decisions imply deathes. Wrong ones. Addressing these points in reverse: I don't ignore those problems, I just think they are rare and signifcantly less common than you believe. I would contend that the numbers of outright gun kills that could be or are prevented or dissuaded by armed citizen defenders (or would never occur in the first place with the knowledge that so many people might be armed) would be vastly higher than accidental discharge deaths or innocents hit by well-meaning defenders, which would be worth it would you agree? Can you disprove this assertion? Or is it just my opinion vs yours? And I will never ever shed one tear for any man with malicious intent injured or killed when he is threatening to kill another by pointing a gun at them...there is no might have when it comes to this situation. The Police do the same thing, why is it ok for them to make that judgement and not a citizen, they are just men with guns after all in the end, and protectors of good against evil per se, same as any other man operating in defense of citizens. He will be charged with manslaughter if he was in the wrong. If an armed assailant gets shot, I am not going to feel bad for them, no matter if they were planning on using it or not (or if they were just using a fake). They deserve every amount of pain or death they receive. You can't tell me they can threaten innocent lives yet be shown mercy in one sentence then say innocent lives at risk are a reason for a good guy citizen not to come to their aid and take the shot. Then explain to me why and how most armies in the world are componsed of soldiers who have EXTENSIVE training and lessons on when, how, and what they incur if they shoot their weapon wrongly. That's because an innocent life is worth everything, even to the point of letting someone who would deserve to die alive, when in doubt. And citizens with no clue can fire at will ?.... And again, both people having a gun means there is really often a dead people there. Most robbers are not killers. But being confronted to someone who has a gun, and wants to defend himself, mean there is a really high chance one of them will end up dead. HOW IS THAT GOOD ? You might find it cowardly, but do you really prefer dying instead of just being robbed ? I'm a soldier. I know how to defend myself, how to attack, disable someone, you name it. I would NOT use these skills, unless my life (or my family) are in immediate danger. Robbers are "forced" to be ready to kill in order to rob in your country. They don't in mine. Why are there less dead people ? Because either both don't have weapon, or only the robber has. Cases of deathes by firearms are extremely rare here, barring the mafia killing each others. And we don't have a higher rob rate either. How do we do it ? Do we just die, are we afraid of not defending ourselves ? No, most thugs just don't have a weapon. You want to defend yourself, it's a good idea, but it's escalating. Robbers WILL rob. And people WILL die. You are advocating the death penalty for people wielding fake weapons to rob a hundred dollars..... Are you fucking SERIOUS ? The cops having lax rules on opening fire is disturbing me greatly, too, but you HAVE to realise that you are afraid of not being able to defend BECAUSE thugs have guns. Why do they have guns ? Because they need to, since everyone has one. It's a circle very difficult to get out of. You are knee-deep in it, so your beliefs are radically different than most other countries, since we don't have that problem. It's a society matter, it doesn't mean you're right. This thread is not about "should US citizens have weapons to defend themselves since all thugs have them", but "should citizens, wherever they are, have the right to freely carry guns." there are all kind of societies here. Yours need weapons, sadly, but it's not a fatality and you should open your views to other types of society. Having a gun mostly increases the chance you will have to kill someone, or be killed, instead of increasing your chances to survive. You're starting with the false assumption that only military and police training can provide training competence and knowledge and safety and gravity of what it means to fire a gun. Military specifically learns combat tactics, positioning, etc, but there is extensive training for normal citizens here when it comes to gun safety and how to react in certain situations. They can even go to 'citizen training facilities' etc, where they have different ranges for urban training. Some states require a certain amount of training to carry: I think they all should. You're also implying that most people who are threatened are going to shoot to kill every time. As I have stated many times, most of the time the threat of a gun is enough of a deterrant. Sometimes it might take a warning shot to prove you're serious. Rarely ever will it take you shooting them, unless they have a death wish. There aren't very many criminals when it comes down to it who will shoot at cops. Same logic applies. Most don't want to go away for murder or get killed, they'd rather give up and accept the consequences. Further, whether you acknowledge it or not, trained shooters know how to shoot to disable without shooting to kill. While no man should pull the trigger without accepting the person on the end may die, there are ways to shoot that are much less deadly. It's not about the severity of their crime. It's about not knowing what they will do with a firearm. I am not advocating shooting who is not armed, that would be evil, and a quick way to get charged with murder or manslaughter (Zimmerman). Like you, I would only shoot if my life or one around me could possibly be in danger. And if a thug is pointing a gun, I'm not going to try to figure out whether it's a fake or is rusted shut or w/e. I'm going to act. In your country, you say most thugs don't have a weapon. So there is no need for you to have one. I get it. Your replaceable, insured property is not worth getting into a confrontation with someone with a weapon. I get that too. But it doesn't matter, weapon or no, you would fight for your life or your family's life am I right? Well, alot of thugs here DO have weapons. As long as that is the case, I will have a gun, because I want to be able to defend my family if the time comes. And it happens here more often than you would think. I'm not advocating that at all. You're exaggerating it to make me look evil. I don't advocate that you can just execute anyone you want just because they rob you or hit you or break in to rape your wife. I'm advocating that someone can use a firearm to defend themselves if someone else threatens them with a deadly weapon, whether its real or they intend to kill, or not. Being threatened with a gun = being threatened with instant death, no one should take a chance on that. Am I saying you pull out a gun and shoot them immediately? Am I saying they deserve to die? No. No I'm not. Many shots will wound and not kill anyway. But I feel no sympathy for them if they get shot, because they brought it upon themselves by threatening with a deadly weapon. You shouldn't either. It's how life works when it's kill or be killed, and you can't know that it's not. There is no time for the police. You're right that it is sad our society has to be this way, it would be great if we could trust that there aren't any more guns out there in thug's hands, but that's not gonna happen overnight, it is the way it is, and you saying it's bad or your country's situation is better won't change a damn thing. If you come up with a solution, let me know.
You're mostly right, I'm just explaining other point of views. I'll just answer specifically a few points :
Citizens *can* learn of train about weapons and the correct ways to use them. Do they ? Are they required to ? Do you have number like the amount of people trained versus the number carrying a gun ?
And yup, it can't change overnight, but right now it can't even begin to change due to that damn NRA and your election system where a 1% difference in a state can mean all or nothing in that state, and change a lot more than 1% in the election... :/ They won't even take the risk.
I'm not making you look evil. You ARE saying armed robbers deserve their death if they threaten a person. Show me your penal code where in a trial, threatening someone with a gun means death sentence. The fact that citizens can inflict justice even justice can't is a flaw to me.
I believe it is about the severity of the crime. I, in fact, don't have the right to shoot someone pointing a weapon at me while on duty. He must shoot first. It's shitty and hard to comply to, but that's what the other's life mean to us.
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On July 23 2012 05:29 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. If EVERY single US non military citizen decided to try and overthrow the government they would lose in less than a month and do nearly no damage. Your gun provides you ZERO defense against tyranny. When second amendment to US Constitution it did because the military used the same weapons as the civilians so it wasnt unrealistic for a overthrow to be possible but that really isnt the case anymore. Thats ridiculous. No regime has survived concentrated resistance, physical or otherwise. Firefights with a military which, undoubtedly wasnt entirely alright with killing american citizens, would cause the collapse of any Government.
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On July 23 2012 05:50 StarStrider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:33 Adila wrote:On July 23 2012 05:29 Adreme wrote:On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. If EVERY single US non military citizen decided to try and overthrow the government they would lose in less than a month and do nearly no damage. Your gun provides you ZERO defense against tyranny. When second amendment to US Constitution it did because the military used the same weapons as the civilians so it wasnt unrealistic for a overthrow to be possible but that really isnt the case anymore. Pretty much. If the government really wanted to kill you, you wouldn't even know it happened until the flames from the drone missile hit you. You'd have to be pretty damn important to the revolutionary movement to earn your own drone strike. There are a lot of people in this country who wouldn't accept tyranny. I would venture that they well outnumber the number in the police force and military.
Kinda throwing back through the quotes, anyone who thinks the population can't overthrow a government is perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrty retarded ... "They'd just BLOW YOU UP!!!!" <--- doesn't work that way. Governments need the people, government should fear the people not the people fearing the government. It's sad anyone makes that ridiculous assumption. "Dey just ya know, boom boom bang bang kill everyone" -.-
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On July 23 2012 05:47 Chargelot wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. Another problem with claiming that the police force could become a tyrant is that you are applying tyranny to the whole of the police force. Like any other collection of people, they are individuals which make up a collective. One can be bad, while the others are not. One police officer going on a rampage does not make the other 750,000 police officers tyrants. You can't simply strip almost a million people of all logic, reasoning, and human qualities, and then apply to them all the same negative opinion. You seem to like your quotes, so here's a nice one for you: Show nested quote +Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 18 "Of Tyranny", Section 202. It does not invalidate a senate for a senator to become a tyrant, it simply invalidates the authority of the singular senator.
Right. My thought on the possibility of tyrrany and revolution is there would be a small group of powerful people who cling to the former power structure in spite of the revolution, and the majority of police and military would side with the American people. Most likely it would end without much bloodshed. That's why I don't think armed citizens would matter too much, but its more about the principle of it: 'you can corner and take or kill all of us one by one, but there are a lot of us, and we're united in our determination, so good fucking luck'
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On July 23 2012 05:53 Nouar wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:37 StarStrider wrote:On July 23 2012 04:53 Nouar wrote:On July 23 2012 04:40 StarStrider wrote:On July 23 2012 04:23 Nouar wrote:On July 22 2012 23:45 StarStrider wrote:On July 22 2012 22:01 TGalore wrote:On July 22 2012 20:03 StarStrider wrote:
A few points regarding the stance that retaliatory fire would do nothing or would 'make things worse':
-People insisting that regular citizens with proper training would by default be less accurate than a combat trained soldier or police officer is simply a false assertion. The assertion that they may react in more of a panic or adrenaline state/tunnel vision is true, but does this mean they would just close their eyes and start shooting randomly and hope they hit the bad guy and no one else? HARDLY.
-Most people would agree with you that in the darkness, smoke, and chaos, hitting the face would be unlikely from more than 15 feet. Unlikely does not mean impossible. But that also said, you need to do research on the impact a 9mm (most common CCW caliber) can have on the human body even through a kevlar vest. Your stance asserts this guy was basically invincible. He had a tac vest on. He may have had other pieces of armor on. I promise you he wasn't wearing an EOD type suit though. He wasn't.
-The face is not the only vulnerable area on this guy's body. Considering less than perfect conditions for our defender(s), a stray bullet could easily tag his arms, hands, elbows, legs, feet, etc. The assertion that bullets could not likely find their way into vulnerable locations is hard to believe.
-The argument that defenders would just aim for center body mass and wouldn't realize he was wearing armor has been proven incorrect, as every eyewitness knew he was armored even before he started shooting. Even so, see above and research how much effect even a 9mil has in direct impact even on center mass on body armor.
-Many with your point of view also like to paint out the scenario that we are neccesarily talking about a single concealed carry defender vs this heavily armed gunman. What if there were 5? It is simple wolfpack instinct to know that when he turns to fire at the first guy who shoots at him, that is when you take your shot. You don't need combat training to recognize this.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun (who has likely trained at a range a few times if he has a CCW permit) are much less than the odds of that gunman killing every person in the theater if no one stops him.
-The odds of an 'innocent bystander' being hit by a defender's gun are signifcantly reduced because everyone is already on the floor when the gas grenades popped. Everyone is already in the most ideal position not to get hit. The likelyhood that someone by random chance is going to jump up and accidentally get in your line of fire is slim.
-What percentage of patrons that night were likely CCW permit holders? Well, based on the average age of the audience at a midnight showing for Batman, I'd say it was pretty slim at ANY theater, even those in Texas and Mississippi. The assertion that someone in there had a personal protection firearm and didn't use it is unfounded and does nothing for this discussion.
-The likelihood of the citizen defender being shot and killed in no way diminishes the fact that they are more likely to stop him by actually trying than by giving up and praying they don't get killed, like everyone else who didn't bring a firearm.
-83 people were shot. If you admit the number shot by a citizen defender in the chaos would be significantly less than that number, then you really have no case.
-The good guys are the ones shooting at the bad guy in the mask and body armor. Step 1: Shoot at the guy in the mask with the AR. Step 2: Don't shoot at the people in the theater seats who are shooting at the armored guy. Trying to say that multiple people with guns wouldn't realize who the fuck to shoot at is just the most stupid assertion I've ever heard.
And that is all just specific points about this incident. Concerning the debate on whether having CCW permit citizens around in other crimes: Given most criminal gunmen do not use body armor, I'd increase the likelyhood of a citizen defender being able to do something to stop them in any other given situation tenfold. Arguments like these are tantamount to blaming the victims for not being armed, in my opinion, and are revolting. It's like blaming a woman for being raped for either not having a weapon to defend herself or "asking for it." What you're asserting here is that some of these people are dead because they chose not to carry a loaded weapon with them into a crowded, closed space full of children and families. It is not nor should it ever be ANY civilian's -responsibility- to be armed. Your post illustrates a common fantasy that so many who own guns seem to have, and that is that they are looking for an opportunity to be a "hero" by killing someone. They see themselves as reacting calmly, with perfect aim, against a more heavily armed assailant in a sudden high stress situation and saving a lot more lives than were lost. But that NEVER happens. It never has in any of the awful mass shootings in our country's history. Relaxed gun laws didn't help during Columbine or Virginia Tech. Hell, more people died at Fort Hood, a military base full of trained soldiers, than in Colorado. The majority of people don't want to carry guns and shouldn't have their safety and interests held hostage by a small percentage of the population that envisions themselves as moonlight superheroes. If those who were pro-gun were truly interested in reducing violence and gun crime rates, then they wouldn't be against so many of the gun safety and anti-proliferation laws that have been attempted to be passed. Would we have a lot less gun crime if all ammunition was serially coded and traceable through a federal database? Absolutely. Would fewer people have died this past week if this man wasn't able to obtain an automatic military assault rifle and instead only had legal access to handguns? More than likely. Should he have been able to buy FOUR GUNS in recent months (really, do you need more than one to defend yourself?) and SIX THOUSAND ROUNDS of ammunition over the INTERNET? I don't think so, but the NRA does and also thinks assault weapons, rampant untracked ammunition, and unlimited guns among the common population is a good idea. It makes me sick. That is a complete distortion. It is a total red herring. It is a complete jump in logic to say that because I claim people would have a better chance of defending themselves if armed than if unarmed, that I am somehow saying they deserve it for not being armed, or that their safety would have been guaranteed. I simply make the assertion that there is a slight chance that it could have been ended before 83 people were shot. Not even likely. Just possible. That possibility is worth carrying. I don't expect everyone to, and I don't blame anyone who doesn't and say 'well when you get raped or mugged, don't cry about it because I warned you'. I'm saying 'give yourself the best chance imo, even if it is a slim one.' How do you know? How many cases are there of killers who got taken out by an armed citizen before they had a chance to kill, that you might just not know about or never heard of because they didn't go national? You, in your infinite knowledge, have studied criminal cases for years and know this to be a fact? You have brought up several cases of mass murder where a citizen did not happen to act. That's it. What does that do for your case? Does this prove that a citizen with a gun could do nothing, because no citizen did anything? Why do you assume that there were concealed carry citizens there but they failed to act or failed to fire back before getting killed? If there were none there, doesn't this hurt, not help your argument? Does it prove that they tried to act but got taken out? How many corpses have we found with guns in their hands or on their person in these massacres? You don't know details like this. You don't know shit. But it's easy to act like you do on an internet forum, therefore everyone is an expert. You generalize and hypothesize. People like you want to marginalize the reality that real citizens with real skills at pointing and shooting could possibly make a difference in these scenarios by painting them out to be living out heroic fantasies from a comic book or a movie. Fuck you. This is real life. It's not about pride or glory or living out some fantasy. It's about possibly saving lives. How dare you marginalize that. You're the sick one friend. Not everyone thinks in terms of a fucking video game, and not everyone thinks as shallowly about it as you do or seem to imagine. I guess every cop just wants to be Magnum PI and every firefighter just wants to be Third Watch. They do it for the medals and ceremonies right? Please get your head out of your ass. For every mass murder you mentioned where no one stopped them with a firearm, I can link you to HUNDREDS of events where gun armed assailants were taken down citizens. Were these assailants intent on killing? How do we know they were going to murder people? Does it matter when you are threatened with a gun? The armed citizens never gave them a chance to find out. Thank god. Is this debate about whether citizens should carry, or whether AR's and ammo should be more strictly controlled? Why do you assume everyone on the pro-gun side wants guns to be free and available for all no matter who they are, what their background, or what kind of gun it is? I dare you to find a single pro-gun person in this thread who is opposed to background checks, psych checks, and mandatory handling and safety courses for all would be gun owners. If they are, they are just an idiot who should be ignored anyway because they are out of touch with reality. You are ignoring a few things. Armed robbery isn't usually equal to death sentence for one. Then, OK, the "bad guy" died. It's still a death. This guy might have, might have not shot, the weapon might have been fake, you might be dead, some lives have been saved, others have been lost. A robber would be far less inclined to shoot if his opponent didn't have a weapon, AND there would be a lot less armed robberies or any other offense with a gun if guns were more controlled/forbidden. Lastly, for a life truly saved, how many are lost by a misunderstanding, and a failed estimation of danger from the "righteous" guy ? I can link you to hundreds of those, too. And the life of an innocent is NEVER, EVER worth whatever you oppose it. You're not *wrong*, you just conveniently ignore a whole side of the problem, that is to say that not everybody should be a hero, because they were not TRAINED to do so and are bound to take bad decisions quite often. With firearms, these bad decisions imply deathes. Wrong ones. Addressing these points in reverse: I don't ignore those problems, I just think they are rare and signifcantly less common than you believe. I would contend that the numbers of outright gun kills that could be or are prevented or dissuaded by armed citizen defenders (or would never occur in the first place with the knowledge that so many people might be armed) would be vastly higher than accidental discharge deaths or innocents hit by well-meaning defenders, which would be worth it would you agree? Can you disprove this assertion? Or is it just my opinion vs yours? And I will never ever shed one tear for any man with malicious intent injured or killed when he is threatening to kill another by pointing a gun at them...there is no might have when it comes to this situation. The Police do the same thing, why is it ok for them to make that judgement and not a citizen, they are just men with guns after all in the end, and protectors of good against evil per se, same as any other man operating in defense of citizens. He will be charged with manslaughter if he was in the wrong. If an armed assailant gets shot, I am not going to feel bad for them, no matter if they were planning on using it or not (or if they were just using a fake). They deserve every amount of pain or death they receive. You can't tell me they can threaten innocent lives yet be shown mercy in one sentence then say innocent lives at risk are a reason for a good guy citizen not to come to their aid and take the shot. Then explain to me why and how most armies in the world are componsed of soldiers who have EXTENSIVE training and lessons on when, how, and what they incur if they shoot their weapon wrongly. That's because an innocent life is worth everything, even to the point of letting someone who would deserve to die alive, when in doubt. And citizens with no clue can fire at will ?.... And again, both people having a gun means there is really often a dead people there. Most robbers are not killers. But being confronted to someone who has a gun, and wants to defend himself, mean there is a really high chance one of them will end up dead. HOW IS THAT GOOD ? You might find it cowardly, but do you really prefer dying instead of just being robbed ? I'm a soldier. I know how to defend myself, how to attack, disable someone, you name it. I would NOT use these skills, unless my life (or my family) are in immediate danger. Robbers are "forced" to be ready to kill in order to rob in your country. They don't in mine. Why are there less dead people ? Because either both don't have weapon, or only the robber has. Cases of deathes by firearms are extremely rare here, barring the mafia killing each others. And we don't have a higher rob rate either. How do we do it ? Do we just die, are we afraid of not defending ourselves ? No, most thugs just don't have a weapon. You want to defend yourself, it's a good idea, but it's escalating. Robbers WILL rob. And people WILL die. You are advocating the death penalty for people wielding fake weapons to rob a hundred dollars..... Are you fucking SERIOUS ? The cops having lax rules on opening fire is disturbing me greatly, too, but you HAVE to realise that you are afraid of not being able to defend BECAUSE thugs have guns. Why do they have guns ? Because they need to, since everyone has one. It's a circle very difficult to get out of. You are knee-deep in it, so your beliefs are radically different than most other countries, since we don't have that problem. It's a society matter, it doesn't mean you're right. This thread is not about "should US citizens have weapons to defend themselves since all thugs have them", but "should citizens, wherever they are, have the right to freely carry guns." there are all kind of societies here. Yours need weapons, sadly, but it's not a fatality and you should open your views to other types of society. Having a gun mostly increases the chance you will have to kill someone, or be killed, instead of increasing your chances to survive. You're starting with the false assumption that only military and police training can provide training competence and knowledge and safety and gravity of what it means to fire a gun. Military specifically learns combat tactics, positioning, etc, but there is extensive training for normal citizens here when it comes to gun safety and how to react in certain situations. They can even go to 'citizen training facilities' etc, where they have different ranges for urban training. Some states require a certain amount of training to carry: I think they all should. You're also implying that most people who are threatened are going to shoot to kill every time. As I have stated many times, most of the time the threat of a gun is enough of a deterrant. Sometimes it might take a warning shot to prove you're serious. Rarely ever will it take you shooting them, unless they have a death wish. There aren't very many criminals when it comes down to it who will shoot at cops. Same logic applies. Most don't want to go away for murder or get killed, they'd rather give up and accept the consequences. Further, whether you acknowledge it or not, trained shooters know how to shoot to disable without shooting to kill. While no man should pull the trigger without accepting the person on the end may die, there are ways to shoot that are much less deadly. It's not about the severity of their crime. It's about not knowing what they will do with a firearm. I am not advocating shooting who is not armed, that would be evil, and a quick way to get charged with murder or manslaughter (Zimmerman). Like you, I would only shoot if my life or one around me could possibly be in danger. And if a thug is pointing a gun, I'm not going to try to figure out whether it's a fake or is rusted shut or w/e. I'm going to act. In your country, you say most thugs don't have a weapon. So there is no need for you to have one. I get it. Your replaceable, insured property is not worth getting into a confrontation with someone with a weapon. I get that too. But it doesn't matter, weapon or no, you would fight for your life or your family's life am I right? Well, alot of thugs here DO have weapons. As long as that is the case, I will have a gun, because I want to be able to defend my family if the time comes. And it happens here more often than you would think. I'm not advocating that at all. You're exaggerating it to make me look evil. I don't advocate that you can just execute anyone you want just because they rob you or hit you or break in to rape your wife. I'm advocating that someone can use a firearm to defend themselves if someone else threatens them with a deadly weapon, whether its real or they intend to kill, or not. Being threatened with a gun = being threatened with instant death, no one should take a chance on that. Am I saying you pull out a gun and shoot them immediately? Am I saying they deserve to die? No. No I'm not. Many shots will wound and not kill anyway. But I feel no sympathy for them if they get shot, because they brought it upon themselves by threatening with a deadly weapon. You shouldn't either. It's how life works when it's kill or be killed, and you can't know that it's not. There is no time for the police. You're right that it is sad our society has to be this way, it would be great if we could trust that there aren't any more guns out there in thug's hands, but that's not gonna happen overnight, it is the way it is, and you saying it's bad or your country's situation is better won't change a damn thing. If you come up with a solution, let me know. You're mostly right, I'm just explaining other point of views. I'll just answer specifically a few points : Citizens *can* learn of train about weapons and the correct ways to use them. Do they ? Are they required to ? Do you have number like the amount of people trained versus the number carrying a gun ? And yup, it can't change overnight, but right now it can't even begin to change due to that damn NRA and your election system where a 1% difference in a state can mean all or nothing in that state, and change a lot more than 1% in the election... :/ They won't even take the risk. I'm not making you look evil. You ARE saying armed robbers deserve their death if they threaten a person. Show me your penal code where in a trial, threatening someone with a gun means death sentence. The fact that citizens can inflict justice even justice can't is a flaw to me.
So in France your penal code says "if a man attacks you with a weapon, just die"? What government could say "suffer the injury" and still be a government validated by the consent of its populace? You seem to confuse citizen action in the moment with justice. When you view it like that, everything a person can do is ridiculous. How many muggers are sentenced to get beat up in a court? But how many people have beat up muggers in France, and didn't get prosecuted for it because they were simply defending themselves?
You simply cannot compare the actions of civillians and government in any situation. They are not, and have never been restricted in the same way. People are allowed to defend themselves from physical harm. You cannot force people to be in a situation where they are either harmed (from inaction) or imprisoned (from action).
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On July 23 2012 05:55 StarStrider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 23 2012 05:47 Chargelot wrote:On July 23 2012 05:26 Wegandi wrote:On July 23 2012 05:17 Chargelot wrote:.... You go ahead and shoot at cops, even the bad ones. I double dare you. Good luck, have fun, die well. “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn If you hand in your weapons there is no means of defense against tyranny, and if history is any indication time is the march of tyranny and enslavement. Another problem with claiming that the police force could become a tyrant is that you are applying tyranny to the whole of the police force. Like any other collection of people, they are individuals which make up a collective. One can be bad, while the others are not. One police officer going on a rampage does not make the other 750,000 police officers tyrants. You can't simply strip almost a million people of all logic, reasoning, and human qualities, and then apply to them all the same negative opinion. You seem to like your quotes, so here's a nice one for you: Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 18 "Of Tyranny", Section 202. It does not invalidate a senate for a senator to become a tyrant, it simply invalidates the authority of the singular senator. Right. My thought on the possibility of tyrrany and revolution is there would be a small group of powerful people who cling to the former power structure in spite of the revolution, and the majority of police and military would side with the American people. Most likely it would end without much bloodshed. That's why I don't think armed citizens would matter too much, but its more about the principle of it: 'you can corner and take or kill all of us one by one, but there are a lot of us, and we're united in our determination, so good fucking luck' Yeah, and I do think there is something to be said about the culture of a society which enshrines and recognizes the right of guns and self defence, and one that does not. I dont think the latter would really have much in the way of determination, tbh.
As to the whole justice issue up a few posts; you have a right to kill someone who threatens your life, not a robber. The rational behind the castle doctrine etc is that you immediately have reasonable grounds to presume a threat to your life if someone breaks into your house. You have no way of knowing their intentions or weaponry, so you make the call to protect yourself.
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