The Onion hits it square on the head

[Qqmike]

Good post GreyGeek.

Moderate liberal here. When I travel by car and am in possession of (salable) valuables, I feel much more relaxed and safe knowing I have with me my AAA card, my cell phone, and a gun. At night while sleeping, when I hear a strange noise around/outside the house, like everyone, I get that certain "startled" feeling; but I feel much better knowing that should it be a naughty player, the odds are on my side with loaded guns handy (and various other skills I may have). I know plenty of people who have had to use such in self defense.

In America, in many areas of "crime" (including minor traffic violations), the bad guys have ruined it for the good guys. And the bad guys are VERY bad, reckless, and driven (by drugs, desperation, evil, insanity, whatever).

Root of all this crime? We could debate that forever. Ever-increasing population? Larger numbers of "poor" people? Lack of proper family values in raising kids? Drugs?

Meanwhile, it will be a cold day in hell before most law-abiding Americans give up their guns, regardless of any laws passed re such.

[ronw]

How many times do public officials jump in front of the cameras when a senior citizen shoots a home invader?

I guessed I missed the press conferences that the President, the Attorney General, and assorted congress people held back in May, and the call for action to find out how we can train and arm more senior citizens, and the call for taxpayer-subsidized firearms for the senior citizens who can't afford them. (intentional use of the generic terms; it doesn't seem to matter who is holding those offices or their political affiliation).

"An 84-year-old Pennsylvania man shot a suspected home invader with a gun used over 65 years ago in World War Two."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...World-War.html

[whatthefunk]

All I can say is thank god I moved to a country that has strict gun laws. Ive been to some pretty dodgy places in my life, but no place has me feeling unsafe like America. Sad.

[GreyGeek]

....
"An 84-year-old Pennsylvania man shot a suspected home invader with a gun used over 65 years ago in World War Two."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...World-War.html

So, since owning or possessing a firearm is illegal in Britain, how long will it be before the 84 year old is charged with assault, or the victim sue him, as has happened in previous cases where home owners used force to defend themselves?

[Qqmike]

Even in the US, even when it's a no-question self defense killing, even when it was a B & E, even then, to get off, you may end up paying a lawyer to get you off on "justifiable" or some such. Have known a couple cases like that.

[HalationEffect]

So, since owning or possessing a firearm is illegal in Britain, how long will it be before the 84 year old is charged with assault, or the victim sue him, as has happened in previous cases where home owners used force to defend themselves?

Huh? The incident occurred in the USA... not sure what British laws have to do with that. As an aside, the British home owner I think you're referring to shot a fleeing intruder in the back. Personally, I don't count that as 'self defence'.

Also, owning or possessing firearms is not illegal in the UK. With a valid firearms certificate you can own semi-automatic rifles as long as they aren't larger than .22 calibre, in addition to single shot rifles (eg. bolt action) in any calibre, as well as shotguns. Handguns are very heavily restricted however; with a few, rare exceptions, it is practically impossible to legally own one in the UK.

[GreyGeek]

All I can say is thank god I moved to a country that has strict gun laws. Ive been to some pretty dodgy places in my life, but no place has me feeling unsafe like America. Sad.

I'm glad you feel safe there. I feel perfectly safe here, in Lincoln, NE. USA.

Mass murder shootings aren't a daily weekly or even monthly occurrence. We've certainly had nothing like the incident in Norway if body count is the criteria. When you compare the loss of life caused by all the Holmes in the country during any given year against those killed in auto accidents (39,000) one would have to ask why there weren't more protests against ownership of cars when mass transit is/could be made available and would be a lot safer. I'm certainly for the availability of affordable mass transit. (When I was a kid growing up in South Denver you could set your watch by the regularity of the electric trolley cars that drove up and down Broadway Street. Every 15 minutes, 24/7/365. My dad always took them to work, 3 miles North of where we lived. Then the local General Motors auto franchise convinced the city fathers to replace the electric trolleys with GM diesel buses, with GM subsidies. The buses were more expensive to run than the electric trolleys, a fact discovered AFTER the tracks were torn out or covered with asphalt, and so they eventually reduced the number of buses and increased the time between them, making them unreliable for mass transit, which was the plan all along. My dad was forced to buy a car just to get to work on time. But, that's another issue.)

In case you haven't noticed, law breakers don't obey laws, including gun laws. And, with court rulings postponing or eliminating the death penalty for capital cases in the majority of states, combined with the "club Med" atmosphere of many prisons, the law and its punishments no longer appear to be an effective determent against crime here in America.

The real question is: "Is there a correlation between the absence of gun control laws and gun violence?". Research on that question is reported here:

The U.S. has a high gun murder rate, whereas a country like England with strict gun controls has almost no gun murders and a very low murder rate. Doesn't this show that gun control is effective in reducing murder rates? Not exactly. Prior to having any gun controls, England already had a homicide rate much lower than the United States (Guns, Murders, and the Constitution: A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, Don B. Kates Jr.). Japan is another country typically cited (see Japanese Gun Control, by David B. Kopel). (Briefly discussing the difference in homicide rates between England and the U.S. is Clayton Cramer's, Variations in California Murder Rates: Does Gun Availability Cause High Murder Rates?)


Gun control opponents can play similar games. The Swiss with 7 million people have hundreds of thousands of fully-automatic rifles in their homes (see GunCite's "Swiss Gun Laws") and the Israelis, until recently, have had easy access to guns (brief summary of Israeli firearms regulations here). Both countries have low homicide rates. Likewise this doesn't mean more guns less crime.


The U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than many European country's total murder rates. On the other hand, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Mexico have non-gun murder rates in excess of our total murder rate.


Incidentally in 13th century Europe, several studies have estimated homicide rates in major cities to be around 60 per 100,000. (Even back then, the equivalent of coroners, kept records.)

There are many, many factors, some much more prominent than gun availability that influence homicide rates and crime in general. (See this excerpt from 1997 FBI Uniform Crime Report and GunCite's "Is Gun Ownership Correlated with Violent Deaths?")

Due to the many confounding factors that arise when attempting international comparisons, this approach would appear to hold little promise for determining the influence of gun levels (or handgun availability) on violence rates.


International Homicide Rate Table (Death rates are per 100,000)

Country	Year	Population	Total Homicide	Firearm Homicide	Non-Gun Homicide	% Households With Guns
South Africa	1995	41,465,000	75.30	26.60	48.70	n/a
Colombia1	2005	43,000,000	36.53	29.59	6.94	n/a
Estonia	1994	1,499,257	28.21	8.07	20.14	n/a
Brazil	1993	160,737,000	19.04	10.58	8.46	n/a
Mexico	1994	90,011,259	17.58	9.88	7.70	n/a
Philippines	1996	72,000,000	16.20	3.50	12.70	n/a
Taiwan2	1996	21,979,444	8.12	0.97	7.15	n/a
N. Ireland	1994	1,641,711	6.09	5.24	0.85	8.4
United States3	1999	272,691,000	5.70	3.72	1.98	39.0
Argentina	1994	34,179,000	4.51	2.11	2.40	n/a
Hungary	1994	10,245,677	3.53	0.23	3.30	n/a
Finland4	1994	5,088,333	3.24	0.86	2.38	23.2
Portugal	1994	5,138,600	2.98	1.28	1.70	n/a
Mauritius	1993	1,062,810	2.35	0	2.35	n/a
Israel	1993	5,261,700	2.32	0.72	1.60	n/a
Italy	1992	56,764,854	2.25	1.66	0.59	16.0
Scotland	1994	5,132,400	2.24	0.19	2.05	4.7
Canada	1992	28,120,065	2.16	0.76	1.40	29.1
Slovenia	1994	1,989,477	2.01	0.35	1.66	n/a
Australia	1994	17,838,401	1.86	0.44	1.42	19.4
Singapore	1994	2,930,200	1.71	0.07	1.64	n/a
South Korea	1994	44,453,179	1.62	0.04	1.58	n/a
New Zealand	1993	3,458,850	1.47	0.17	1.30	22.3
Belgium	1990	9,967,387	1.41	0.60	0.81	16.6
England/Wales5	1997	51,429,000	1.41	0.11	1.30	4.7
Switzerland6	1994	7,021,000	1.32	0.58	0.74	27.2
Sweden	1993	8,718,571	1.30	0.18	1.12	15.1
Denmark	1993	5,189,378	1.21	0.23	0.98	n/a
Austria	1994	8,029,717	1.17	0.42	0.75	n/a
Germany7	1994	81,338,093	1.17	0.22	0.95	8.9
Greece	1994	10,426,289	1.14	0.59	0.55	n/a
France	1994	57,915,450	1.12	0.44	0.68	22.6
Netherlands	1994	15,382,830	1.11	0.36	0.75	1.9
Kuwait	1995	1,684,529	1.01	0.36	0.65	n/a
Norway	1993	4,324,815	0.97	0.30	0.67	32.0
Spain	1993	39,086,079	0.95	0.21	0.74	13.1
Japan	1994	124,069,000	0.62	0.02	0.60	n/a
Ireland	1991	3,525,719	0.62	0.03	0.59	n/a
Country	Year	Population	Total Homicide	Firearm Homicide	Non-Gun Homicide	% Households With Guns

[ScottyK]

Thats just a couple miles from where I grew up. Weird that something like that can happen so close to home.

I also grew up a few miles away from the site. Weird to see my old high school on the national news. Left Aurora for the military in 1993, and even by then Aurora Mall was getting pretty rough.

[vinnywright]

Personally I blame the media and the powers that be for making a lot of people think ; it's so dangerous out their, and afraid of every other person on the street that may look to different than they would like.
and I think that the powers that be want it that way and are actively working on making it worse so they can justify taking away more of our rights and freedoms and scare us into letting even asking for them to invade our privacy more and more until we have none .

So far in my 50 years of life I'v found that even the scariest looking of people (subjective I know); are just people, after you get to know them and treat them as you would want to be treated .

As to this latest craze person ........ya we can debate crazy till were blue in the face but as Forest Gump would say "crazy is as crazy dose " and what he did was crazy.
He should be executed quickly ,I would say on seen as he was captured ,but I suppose some attempt should be made to determine the mind set of such crazy people before killing them.
But the idea that such a blatantly heinous act should go through years of litigation at taxpayer expense is ludicrous in my opinion he should die for just the little girl let alone the rest.

Do I think we should loose our guns ......h311 no you can pry it from my cold dead hand before I give it up .....criminals will always have guns if they want, their criminals,they don't care if they are legal or not. Would I ever shoot some one that wasn't trying to harm me H311 no ....... would I shoot some one braking into my house ......not if they run when I tell them to, but let me think they are thinking of attacking instead of running well to bad so sad you picked the wrong house .

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

I heard a national CBS newscaster claim that "This was the worst shooting disaster in American history!". As a pro-gun control advocate I knew he was piling it on. The Dr. Susan Gratia video I posted earlier described the Luby's Resturant shooting in Killeen, Tx, in 1991. That mad man killed 23 and wounded 19. IF ALL of the eight currently in intensive care were to die the toll would still be 3 short of "the worst shooting disaster" in America.

Wikipedia has a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...lers:_Americas

That list appears flawed, however, as it fails to list Charles Whiteman, University of Texas sniper who, in 1968, killed 14 and wounded 31. That was the year I graduated with an MS from ACU, a school in Texas. So, there are at least 5 or 6 other cases that resulted in higher death counts than the Aurora shooting.

The list also points out that within the last twenty five years there are several incidents of mass shootings in the United Kingdom. Two killed 16 each and one resulted in the deaths of 17, one for 12, and several that killed between 3 and 10. But, I have no doubt that like most people that live there, if I were there I would feel perfectly safe and be so. Just as I feel about living here in America.

Although it wasn't by a gun, in 1927 a disgruntled school board member set off a bomb in a public school that killed 45 children and wounded many more.

[Qqmike]

On the issue of gun control, of course, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition.
For example, limits/restrictions should be placed on certain classes of firearms (e.g., assault); on who can buy guns; on time requirements between purchase and delivery, and other controlling/regulating restrictions.

[GreyGeek]

Here is some interesting data on crimes in the US for 2010, compiled by the FBI.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...dedoffensemain

Very interesting breakdowns.

[GreyGeek]

On the issue of gun control, of course, it's not an all-or-nothing proposition.
For example, limits/restrictions should be placed on certain classes of firearms (e.g., assault); on who can buy guns; on time requirements between purchase and delivery, and other controlling/regulating restrictions.

Perhaps it is "all or nothing". The 2nd Amendment makes no such divisions or qualifications about what or who. The weapons available to the colonialists at that time were "state-of-the-art". Had they not been able to lay their hands on their own cannons, rifles, grenades, rockets, etc..., they would not have been able to defeat the English army, which was the best equipped in the world. Nor would they have been able to defend themselves from the French or Indians, or the rouge elements that drifted by. As the Declaration of Independence points out, the reason for weapons is the defense of freedom from all of its enemies, both foreign AND DOMESTIC. For the defense of his person and property a citizen today should be able to access the same weaponry that thugs and crazies buy on the black market, even in cities with STRICT gun control.

Since the issue is murders due to firearms, here are the statistics for 2010:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...ime/murdermain
and the murders by type of weapons:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...es/10tbl20.xls

When a public business like the Aurora theater posts on their door a sign declaring the the theater to be a "Gun Free Zone", and demanding that even their security work unarmed (moonlighting cops!), while it is politically correct, all they are really doing is assuring the thugs and the crazies that they will not encounter any resistance from armed customers or staff. Therefore, I believe that the theater has assumed all the liabilities for keeping their patrons safe and should bear all the financial responsibilities that arose from the shootings.

[whatthefunk]

Perhaps it is "all or nothing". The 2nd Amendment makes no such divisions or qualifications about what or who. The weapons available to the colonialists at that time were "state-of-the-art". Had they not been able to lay their hands on their own cannons, rifles, grenades, rockets, etc..., they would not have been able to defeat the English army, which was the best equipped in the world. Nor would they have been able to defend themselves from the French or Indians, or the rouge elements that drifted by. As the Declaration of Independence points out, the reason for weapons is the defense of freedom from all of its enemies, both foreign AND DOMESTIC. For the defense of his person and property a citizen today should be able to access the same weaponry that thugs and crazies buy on the black market, even in cities with STRICT gun control.

This is insane. What can one not buy on the black market? Following this logic, citizens should have access to tanks, aircraft carriers, nuclear arms, rocket launchers, and high powered automatic guns. A group of citizens armed with handguns arent going to do much against a well equipped army.

When a public business like the Aurora theater posts on their door a sign declaring the the theater to be a "Gun Free Zone", and demanding that even their security work unarmed (moonlighting cops!), while it is politically correct, all they are really doing is assuring the thugs and the crazies that they will not encounter any resistance from armed customers or staff. Therefore, I believe that the theater has assumed all the liabilities for keeping their patrons safe and should bear all the financial responsibilities that arose from the shootings.

I know that the argument is that if somebody in the theater had been armed they could have shot the dude on the killing spree, but there is a reason why that theater and mall is a no gun zone. There are a lot of gangs in that area and when I was growing up there were always shootings there. Nothing big that made the national news, but a least once or twice a year that mall was in the news. In a case like the recent Batman shooting, somebody with a gun could have stopped him and the casualties could have been limited. However, theres no doubt in my mind that if guns were allowed in that mall, the number of smaller incidents would shoot through the roof. Pro gun people like to think that more guns = fewer incidents but they have zero evidence to prove this.

[GreyGeek]

If strict gun control laws can't control the guns obtained by gangs of what use is it except to prohibit gun possession by those who do abide by the law, regardless of how stupid or anti-Constitutional it is? The 2nd Amendment uses the phrase "shall not be infringed".

infringedpast participle, past tense of in·fringe (Verb)

Verb:

Actively break the terms of (a law, agreement, etc.): "infringe a copyright". Act so as to limit or undermine (something); encroach on: "infringe on his privacy".

or, infringe his 2nd Amendment rights.

Pro gun people like to think that more guns = fewer incidents but they have zero evidence to prove this.

A lot of pro gun control advocates make that claim but they are wrong.

There is ample evidence available with a casual search on the Internet which shows that gun control laws do not reduce crime. Those cities with the largest murder rates have the strictest gun control laws. But, the opposite can be shown.

A study by John R. Lott, Jr. and David B. Mustard, Crime, Deterrence, and Right to Carry Concealed Handguns, (26 J. LEGAL STUD. 1, 19 (1997) ) found that concealed carry laws and the accompanying decline in violence crime lead to significant financial savings. pg 64:"The estimated annual gain in 1992 from allowing concealed handguns was over $5.74 billion."


Don B. Kates reported in Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?, (30 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 649, 658 n.30 (2007)) "Several critics have now replicated Lott's work using additional or different data, additional control variables, or new or different statistical techniques they deem superior to those Lott used. Interestingly, the replications all confirm Lott's general conclusions; some even find that Lott underestimated the crime-reductive effects of allowing good citizens to carry concealed guns.".


As I pointed out before, a DOJ study confirmed that the use of firearms in self defense is prevalent. Validating that finding, another study, National Self Defense Survey, conducted by criminologists from Florida State University, found that Americans use guns in self defense an estimated 2.2 to 2.5 million times a year, or every 13 seconds. In my post I averaged the value to 1 Million, since the anti-gun proponents "found" that guns were used in self-defense only 108,000 times a year.

Contrary to the common straw-man argument that CCW holders would panic and start shooting everyone in sight, Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz reported in The Prevalence and Nature of Self Defense with a Gun, (86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 150, 164 (1995)) that, in general, simply brandishing a gun or firing a warning shot is sufficient to defend against an attacker in most cases of self defense involving a firearm. Only 24% of people surveyed reported firing a gun in self defense, and just 8% reported wounding an assailant with a gun.

That same study found that there is little evidence that law-abiding permit holders are a threat to public safety. The state of Florida, which has issued over 2 million concealed carry permits since it adopted a `right-to-carry' law in 1987, has revoked just 6,400 permits (just 0.3 percent of the total issued permits) and just 168 concealed carry permits were revoked due to the use of a firearm in a crime (just 0.008 percent). (From the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Licensing, Concealed Weapon/Firearm Summary Report, http://licgweb.doacs.state.fl.us/stats/cwX monthly.html ... but that URL is no longer active and Florida didn't redirect to other links to their CCW studies.)


An interesting aside: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/arch.../t-905322.html
Hopefully, H.R. 822 will clear up this mess.

Here is a post I made under a post by ESR on G+

As I read these anti-gun arguments I'm surprised that I haven't heard "think of the children!" yet. Another thing I haven't heard is the hypocrisy of the loudest proponents. I remember Congress woman Dianna Feinstein making a lot of anti-gun noise at a press conferences, waving around an AK-47 and muzzle flashing the crowd in total ignorance. Claiming to be trained in the use of firearms she apparently never heard that it is the "unloaded gun" that frequently kills.
http://www.nndb.com/people/535/000023466/

Feinstein is an anti-gun Senator who still somehow found the fortitude to obtain for herself a concealed firearms carry permit, a privilege she wants to deny others.

"I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I'd walk to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon. I made the determination that if somebody was going to try to take me out, I was going to take them with me."

Remember Rosie O'Donnell and her huge mouth? What did she have to fear? She got CCW permits for her bodyguards: http://www.alphadogweb.com/firearms/rosie.htm
So it goes with a lot of the Hollywood anti-gun crowd.

The Extreme Left is feverent about gun control too. Remember Bill Ayres? Guns weren't enough. He made and used bombs in addition, creating the Weathermen Underground, and his only confession is that he didn't set off enough of them. And now he, an unconvicted, self-confessed murderer, lectures us on morality and advocates gun control?