Summations Only

Since we have reported stats from multiple sources all pointing to the same conclusion, it would appear very strongly that you consider "evidence I can trust" to simply mean "evidence that supports my pre-existing conclusion."That doesn't say anything good about your willingness to consider evidence in a debate.

Perhaps I should link Faith the video of Americans commenting on how well Obama/Romney did in their 2nd live debate....1 day before the 2nd debate was due to happen.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

I found evidence against yours, it isn't false just because I'm the one who found it. It contributes to my doubt about all the statistics here. You also hold different ideas about what you want to accomplish than I do. I'm aghast at ANY kind of rise in crime from gun bans, you seem to think that's all fine as long as deaths go down. And nobody so far has given statistics that show the CAUSE of the deaths in any of the cases, which is crucial information. But I'm not for exchanging lower death rates for higher home invasions or other crimes anyway. Crime is crime. We need a way to protect our schools, we don't need our guns taken away. Nobody seems to care what the founders had to say about the necessity of the Second Amendment because of the real threat of government and other forms of tyranny against the people, but THAT's the bottom line for me.

We had hoped that data about gun deaths and gun homicides would have successfully conveyed the cause of death.
But it seems to have been too difficult for you to work out. Yeah.
Property is more important than people's lives.
That is what Jesus teaches, yes?Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

I'd rather have my car stolen than my kid killed for stealing a car. I would want my child punished for stealing someones car, but feel death is a bit harsh. Faith, however, would rather shoot my child than have her car stolen. There is no reasoning that away.

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The liberal solution for Education seems to be to raise tuition so high people wise up.
The get "educated" enough to count four years time and tuition = $200,000.
They will simply buy their kids a franchise business and drop out of school.

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No, the liberal solution is to educate everyone. That is at least what we "liberal hippie communists" on this side of the Atlantic believe.I am totally gobsmacked that you (and your fellow "thinkers") think that a nice society would be the one with everyone armed and paranoidly expecting for the worst. No thank you.

Rounding up people & putting them into government-run camps, do you consider that tyranny Faith?

Then you must be for the private ownership of any and all forms of weaponry. Even if my whole neighborhood had semi-automatic weapons, we couldn't stop tanks and helicopters from destroying our homes. The neighborhood association would need weapons of equal power.

"Fine" is too strong a term. You're speaking in absolutes. When we talk about crime, death, and violence, what we're mostly talking about is trying to find the least bad option.Crime will never go away. Violence will never be completely eliminated. Murders will always happen to some degree or another.The purpose of the entire criminal justice system, and in fact the reason self-defense is a justification for homicide, is that some scenarios are ethically and socially preferable to others.The absolute best case fantasy-world scenario is one in which nobody ever gets shot, nobody ever gets robbed, raped, beat up, etc.We can never quite get there, but I think you and I would both agree that we could go some distance toward that goal beyond where we lie today. We just disagree on how far and how to do it.Every person who becomes a killer is a person, a human being with hopes and dreams who feels pain and pleasure and has family and friends and loved ones just like the rest of us. Some of those people are mentally ill; others are not necessarily mentally ill but otherwise choose to take other human lives. The best possible world would be one where those people never became killers in the first place - this is the driving force behind the suggestion that better mental health care can reduce the number of violent criminals, including killers, by making sure they get help before they turn into killers.But even when prevention is impossible, when someone slips through the cracks of mental health care or someone just snaps, it would be preferable if that person's ability to kill were reduced. The hypothesis is that guns allow for more efficient killing than just about anything else - explosives require more foresight, planning, and access to the target area without being caught, and more destructive weapons are solely in the hands of the military (tanks, RPGs, bombers, cruise missiles, etc). If we could reduce the availability of firearms, a given person who turns killer would need to use a less effective weapon - you don't tend to see 30 people stabbed to death by a single person, for example.Your hypothesis is that armed law-abiding citizens can kill a killer before he racks up a high body count. There are instances of this happening - the police use lethal force on occasion for this very reason. It's not an invalid argument, not completely.But if you think about how the police, the trained professionals, handle the use of lethal force, you'll note that they don't just go "Rambo" and charge in, guns blazing. They do sometimes wind up in a shootout with an armed suspect, and innocent people do wind up getting hurt. They even mistakenly shoot innocent, unarmed individuals thinking they are armed - toy guns in the US are sold with a bright orange cap nowadays because there were multiple instances of police officers thinking that a child was waving a gun at them, and opening fire, because there was no way for them to tell the difference. Even among the most well trained handlers of lethal force, accidents, mistakes, and collateral damage happens.Many of the mass-shooting perpetrators are not actually afraid to die - in fact, death is their intention. They just want to kill a bunch of people, first. Guns aren't a particularly effective deterrent against someone who intends to shoot himself anyway.In the case of mass shootings and hostage situations, you'll note that, when the police arrive before the shooting is done, they still do not just charge in and try to "take out" the assailant.If the trained police, including SWAT, don't think simply opening fire is the best idea, what makes you think it's a good idea for gun-wielding civilians to do so? That's trivially false, Faith. Jaywalking is a crime, but it's not murder. Embezzlement is a crime, but it's not murder. Perjury is a crime, but it's not murder.Let's be honest here - if you actually had to make a binary choice - to have your car stolen, or to be shot dead, with absolutely no other choices - which would you choose? I'd choose to have my car stolen, every single time. Crime is not universally equivalent - that only happens in your Bible. And while your deity might judge a white-collar criminal to be just as sinful as the perpetrator of a mass shooting, human justice systems do not. That's why we have different sentences for different crimes, from a simple fine to imprisonment (we can have the death penalty discussion elsewhere). The founders were not gods, Faith. They were reasonably smart men, but they weren't infallible. After all, the founders said that slavery was just fine. And in their time, your average citizen could be as well-armed as your average soldier with no problems. There were no tanks, barely any artillery, no planes, no RPGs, no armored vehicles. Threats both foreign and domestic took completely different forms in the 18th century, and while an armed militia could fight off the British (by endlessly retreating and dying until the Brits didn't want to play any more, not by winning battles) back then, an armed militia today would stand about as much a chance against a modern military as...well, look at Iraq and Afghanistan. The Second Amendment did provide protection against government tyranny in the 18th century. Today, it does not. Not even a little. An armed populace still has no defense against tanks. If our government and military institute martial law, there is nothing in terms of violent resistance that you could do with your guns to effectively win. Nothing at all. The age of the armed revolution died when the age of the tank began. If you want to prevent or resist tyranny, today we do so through words and political action, not with bullets.The Second Amendment is worthless today for its original stated purpose. It might make you feel better...but your handgun doesn't do any good when an unmanned drone fires a Hellfire missile into your house, effectively ending your resistance.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

No, that refrain about having to equal modern armies is silly. I'm for very modest weapons when it comes to citizen ownership, handguns, rifles. If the army decides to make war on us we won't be able to do much, but something is better than nothing in my opinion.

I don't agree with this. The government has a vested interest in its people being alive. Without the people there's nothing to govern. There's no situation where the government would go to war with its own people, which is what it would take if the people are armed.If the people are not armed, then there's no need for any military-like 'invasion' in the first place. The people are already defenseless and could be pushed around in much more subtle ways.So in the sense that the 2nd amendment provides arms to the people and the people being armed would require government tyranny to be a military-like invasion like you describe, since the government would not do something like that, then the 2nd amendment does provide protection against government tyranny.ABE:Maybe a more consice way to say it:An armed populous ups the ante to the point where the government doesn't want to play the game of tyranny.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

One purpose of the Second Amendment was to protect your house and family from criminals. That was discussed by the founders too as part of the provision.

Again - look at Iraq and Afghanistan. "Terrorists" are essentially identical to "armed citizen militias." The difference is primarily in the tactics each is willing to ethically embrace, and the political position of the person applying the label.The armed resistance did nothing of significance. The remaining populace is still alive. One can put down a resistance without nuking the population in its entirety. Why would those "subtle ways" not work against an armed populace? If the "subtle ways" would work regardless, and the tyrannical government desires a living subservient population, why not just stick with the "subtle ways" in the first place?

Where by "criminals" you are partially talking about "Native American raids on an outlying farm where law enforcement doesn't exist."Again, the world is a different place than it was in the 18th century. Today, a criminal invading your home is encouraged to take a gun of his own in case the homeowner is armed - it's a simple escalation.Or, of course, the "invader" could be your own child sneaking into our out of the house late at night, as recently happened in this case.Are you prepared to accept the possible consequences of your favored position? That includes accidental gun deaths that would not have occurred if guns were not present.That's a really, really short response to an extremely long post. Should I take it that you concede on all other points?ABE

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NEW FAIRFIELD, Conn. -- A man fatally shot a masked teenager in self-defense outside his neighbor's house during what appeared to be an attempted late-night burglary and then discovered it was his son, state police said.

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Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

Huh? They had to have another country invade them to start to get their shit together. What are you talking about? Oh, did we eliminate the terrorists? Has the resistance really been put down? Because they might start shooting.