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Comments
Guns are a wee bit more complex than you think, buddy.
Which is why you undergo basic practice in their use instead of buying one and expecting it to do magic when you need it. Has nobody heard of a shooting range anymore? Or instruction?
A Tazer would be a much, much, much better method of self-defence than a gun. Not in terms of how many shots it can fire, but in terms of it's much less likely to kill people.
With pepper spray/baseball bats/tazers, the baseball bats requires you to get up close, the pepper spray will most likely get caught in your eyes too in an enclosed space, and the burglar can still spray fire if you get him with pepper spray or a baseball bat.
^^^Which everyone who gets a gun totally does!
^^Puh-retty much.
^If the burglar already has a gun you're pretty much boned already (assuming he knows what he's doing).
Also, legal rifles aren't that complicated. I've loaded them before. It's not like loading an assault rifle or something. It's mostly maintenence that will give people trouble.
^ then you're boned using any of your methods too.
If I'm being burglarized by a meth-head, I'm sorry to say his well-being would be a distant second concern.
"Which everyone who gets a gun totally does!"
Many of them do, at the very least from relatives who have been using guns for a very long time. This is a line of reason for licensing, not restriction.
bluh not getting into this debate again
For me, it's a question of evenness. People should have access to arms that can defend them against what criminals can throw at them. If firearms were to be banned or restricted in the USA, I think the first step would be to enact an initiative against unlawful gun ownership and removing guns from the ownership of those with violent criminal backgrounds. When the bad guys are significantly disarmed, then it's more reasonable to disarm civilians as well.
It's one thing to have a strong police force, but it's another entirely to be confronted with violence then and there and have no way out. During times like those, civilians need a means to defend themselves. Ideally, I'd like to see study of the martial arts become a much bigger thing amongst civilians, but it might also mean the continued legality of certain weapons. I'm not really sure which ones.
Although anything that fires faster than semi-automatic should definitely be illegal, as should non-hunting, non-sport weapons that take particularly large rounds. Defending oneself doesn't mean killing the aggressor; a bullet that is more likely to wound and temporarily disable than kill is better than something that entirely destroys organs or bounces internally. Magazine sizes should also face lawful limitation. Ten rounds is probably a good limit, if not less.
Whatever the case might be, I strongly believe in civilians having some means of defending themselves against violent crime the moment it happens, whatever the means of that might be. I don't particularly care if that means restricting weapons or allowing them to civilians. My ideal result is simply one in which a violent criminal cannot feel confident in assaulting, stealing, raping or murdering.
^ Yeah, I agree with that. Gun ownership needs to be cracked down on. Prevent selling guns to people with violent backgrounds, give a mandatory, quick lesson on loading and firing your gun, tougher checks on students having guns in schools, things like that.
I'm with Cygan. I'm done here, especially after classist generalizations start getting thrown around.
Peace out, yo.
>
Personally, I'm pro-gun-legality with heavy restrictions. I think it should be difficult to get a gun, but not illegal. Better background checks. Nothing automatic. Nothing with large rounds. So basically what Alex said.
There are definite downsides to it, people will get hurt, but that's human nature. People would find ways to kill each other if we banned anything that could conceivably be a weapon.
And I've never met the stereotypical "Guns are awesome, fuck yeah boomsticks forever" guy. The people who I know own guns have one solely for self defense. The average person isn't a killer.
As I see it, the difference between confronting a hypothetical home-invader with a gun instead of a baseball bat is the intimidation factor. I'm sure most people who own a gun never want to pull the trigger.
If you've got someone who's unstable or desperate enough to invade an occupied home in the first place, they might look at someone with a baseball bat and think that they might have a chance. Only someone who's really out of it is going to think that sticking around when someone has a gun in their face is a good idea.
I don't know about you guys, but this would scare me just as much as a gun would.
^^ Once again, pretty much that. A big part of people wanting to own guns is the intimidation factor.
And you can fire a warning shot or something with a gun.
^ Are you talking to me? Because I agree with you.
Whatever works.
Unfortunately, guns complicate things a lot because of the range issue. Range is important in any kind of combat engagement, as it defines who holds initiative.
I don't particularly care about pro-gun or anti-gun. All I want is a solution that diminishes or removes violent crime against innocents. I'm not sure which position is better for that at the moment, but it's important to consider all the facts.
Your point was that it's intimidating to have a gun. Tasers... look like guns, really, so they have the same intimidation factor.
I would say that actually shooting someone is a terrible thing you should do everything in your power to avoid, but bluh.
The closest I've ever seen to this is ex-army gun nerds like my dad, and that's more to do with artisanship. Never really met a gung-ho Yosemite Sam.
And I'm talking worst case scenario here. The vast majority of people who own guns never want to shoot a person, but if it comes down to a situation like that, it's not so simple. And if never shooting people in any situation, no matter what, there's no one forcing anyone to buy a gun.
@Orcus: Nah, sorry, that was at Nova.
I think tazers should be emphasized more as an alternative for guns. But guns should still be an option, for people who want more than one shot, or just feel more safe with a classic self-defense weapon.
However gun ownership doesn't actually reduce non gun crime, so yes without/heavily regulated guns people find other ways to kill but they also do it less. See study I linked in the last page.
As Bee kindly pointed out, training and such can ensure you very probably won't miss with your Taser. And a shot from a Taser is a lot more debilitating than a shot from a gun if it doesn't hit a particularly vital region.
As for intimidation, convincing a burglar to leave and attack someone else in the neighborhood less likely to defend themselves (this town has a lot of old folks after all) is frankly not a solution IMO. If I have the means to stop him, as far as I care I'm obligated to.
^^ Well, when panic sets in, that training could go away quickly. The same can be said for guns. But you can fire multiple times with a gun.
As I said, though, tazers are a good alternative.
I'm not about to say tasers are a bad thing. They're not. At all.
Just that there are plenty of very valid reasons why it might not be adequate.