I'm not entirely convinced by this. I can buy that the average burglar would seek to avoid conflict but, but I have a hard time seeing how you can make conclusive statements regard their ability to aim a gun at relatively short range.
In my experience it's fairly easy to hit something a few metres away with any weapon, be it a tossed rock, a waterpistol, a bow or a bb gun, and I assume the principle is the same with a handgun too. I didn't need training to hit things smaller than a human body from five metres away, or maybe even ten (but then again, my instructor at the (bb) shooting-club told me I was a natural, so who knows
).
No matter how little you've trained, it's mostly a case of point-and-shoot at close range, they might not even hit you center-mass, but not even a total muppet could avoid to wing you with a full mag. The only way you'd have a real advantage there would be if your training with a gun involved drawing like some bloody cowboy.
Sure, you might be more likely to hit them exactly where you aim, and maybe you'll have an easier time hitting them with all your shots, but I reckon it only takes one shot. This is of course in optimal conditions, if everyone is moving around it's a bastard no matter the amount of training involved, all in all, it might be more a matter of luck than any sort of skill.
I don't quite grasp this, as I suggested that they'd be shooting at stuff just for the hell of it, and thus be getting some training, specifically because they are idiots.
But putting that aside, it takes all kinds to do crime, including someone like me at a certain point in life. I never fancied myself overly reckless, and while I'd never under any circumstances have broken into anyone's home, since my conscience would not have let me, the concept of burglary might not be an entirely foreign concept for me.
What I can tell is that if I had encountered someone, child or adult, female or male, I'd have legged it, 'cos I sure as hell wouldn't have stood around waiting for anyone to memorize my face.
The only way you'd have gotten me to hurt someone would have been if they'd attacked or threatened me with a knife or something, 'cos then I reckon any survival instincts might have kicked in. Like I've said before, I think most people would avoid conflict as far as they could, and while I suppose that the gun, assuming nothing goes wrong, would be some form of deterrent to those abnormal enough to attack you without provocation, I also think that it might trigger an aggressive response in some that would otherwise have done the sane thing and just left.
And contest this as much as you like, but people tend to be part of the norm, no matter where in society they are currently at, your thugs might be idiots, but I still don't think it's possible that most of them would immediately charge you, rather than run.
Like I've said I think that just the sight of you might be protection enough, that's why most of them would pick a time when they think that you aren't at home. if you aren't at home to wave it about, the gun is absolutely useless anyway.
Most of us feel just that way, "don't fuck with my stuff", it's a fairly normal mode of thought, but I don't think it'd be worth risking my life over. Also, quite frankly, I would be a bit worried about who I might shoot too. No matter if the law was on my side, I'd still have to live with the fact that I'd shot a fifteen-year-old kid out for thrills, if so was the case.
I'd rather lose my tv than have to live with that.
There are more than one type of gun-related accident, the notion of accidentally just pulling the trigger when you are pointing the gun at someone already, scares me, and it doesn't seem too improbable. You wouldn't know who he or she might have been in the future. I would not want that responsibility.
Apart from that I think that, ultimately, odds or not, this belief that owning a gun is worthwhile because it might save you is just that, a belief, looking at statistics or using common sense it's pretty evident that people get injured or killed by guns a lot more often, and that the number of deaths per capita is higher, than in a civilized society that doesn't have them. Thus I think it is safe to say that the right to own guns never saved anyone, and that the belief in them as a saviour is misplaced.
A lot of people get killed, and while they do have guns to protect them, this hardly seems to bring down the number of deaths.
Again, the sign is not the gun, if you do have one, and it wards them off, then it would have done exactly the same thing without you owning the gun.
At the same time, if the sign is there to announce that you have a gun, then any burglars that do enter your home, will be burglars prepared to shoot you to defend themselves.
If the sign says something else, announcing the existence of an alarm or so, then the sign and the gun have no bearing on each other. And the effectiveness of the one doesn't in any way reflect upon the other.
No it isn't, I'm saying that there're all kinds of reasons that you might not be performing at your best, illness and alcohol are just two examples. The world doesn't wait for you to react when it's convenient. you want to think that any one of these things is unlikely on it's own, that's fine, but that's not the same thing as saying that one of a thousand silly things that might go wrong happening is equally unlikely. It's impossible to do things exactly the way you want, pretty much no matter what you are trying to do.
I've never said I didn't like guns, not liking guns is not the same thing as saying they aren't necessary for the purpose you have them for.
If you owned yours to hunt, or because you were in the police, then it would be something else entirely.
I couldn't argue about anything, you know this just as well as I, and if this was an argument to which I had no arguments, you'd hardly be pulling out these kinds of non-sequiters in lieu of actual arguments to support your stance.
And this means what?
I conveniently forget..? What I'm saying is that they
might be thinking just the same thing as you ie "my antagonist in this matter may be dangerous to me, so as a precaution I'll use my gun to ensure that he or she doesn't hurt me". Everybody knows it's perfectly possible to live without a gun, but a lot of people are afraid that the other party might have one, you yourself is a perfectly valid example of this.
As for the rest, it really doesn't matter why they got shot, the point is that they did get shot, gun or not.
Logic dictates nothing in this case, statistics indicate that there's no conclusive evidence to support your stance. Your gun might as well be what gets you in trouble, either because one of a thousand things goes wrong with your handling of it, or because the sight of it is what provokes someone else into shooting you.
I would not call my "logic" fishing, when yours is as unsteady as it is.
I have never seen F9/11, and my views of your country comes from watching people, coupled with what I know about your system. I know how people act, and I know how accidents happen.
This has absolutely nothing to with ignorance. I'm not a gun-activist, and I have no party-affiliation whatsoever, I say what I say because it's what makes sense.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by J2
).
Bookmarks