Summations Only

I think you missed Percy's point.
It might be suddenly very, very desirable to have a gun next to you on the nightstand (and the ability to use it and think clearly when woken up at 2 am). That is true and I think Percy meant to suggest that he agrees.However, he says and I think any semi sane person would agree that most of the time having a loaded gun around is a very stupid and dangerous thing.So what are the odds of you waking up in the middle of the night and needing the gun so you aren't beaten to death in your own bed as compared to the odds of finding yourself with a dead family member laying on the floor when you turn on the light?He says that all the information we have tells us that the odds are you will end up with your grandson dead on the floor more often than a psycho killer.

I think you have a point Ringo but mostly I think Faith is right: The gun owners in the US are mostly as law abiding as any of us. ( I do speed a little when driving). They also are generally as responsible as the rest of us. Do we understand, really, what our car can do?The problem is that many of those responsible, law abiding gun-owners accidentally kill and injure innocent people.I'll hope that I can be lazy and let Percy drag out the actual facts again but what I seem to recall from before is that if you are a responsible, law abiding gun owner then you are not increasing your safety in any useful way and in fact are putting your life and the life of your family in greater danger than if you didn't have a gun.This, I think, even applies in the gun soaked US where someone might show up with a gun. Here, I'd be even more crazy to have a gun around when I can have reasonable assurance that there isn't one within blocks of me.

So you agree that responsible gun use precludes it as being of any likely use for self defense in the case of an armed break it.

Thereby making the guns slow to access and mostly useless for self defense.So you can have them available on an emergency basis and kill your kids or have them safe and be useless to you.of course, it is not black and white like that. But that describes the general parameters. The safer they are the more difficult to have available they are.On the nightstand to grab as you get half awake and shoot into the dark is one end and locked in a gun safe in the basement is the other extreme.What do you suggest?

What your use of Petro's so called "statistics" prove is that you are correct. Correct when you say you don't understand statistics that is.

The substance was, perhaps, a little too hidden for you to see. What Petro supplied were not statistics. The face that you can't tell that makes any comment about your knowledge of statistics a fact rather than an ad hominem attack.

It's possible I owe Faith and apology but I'm not so sure of that yet.I looked only at what she copied into her post and I see cherry picking individual data points not any statistics.I'm not convinced that individual numbers are "statistics" that one can dare to draw any conclusions from.

You have avoided answering the problem of the gun on the nightstand to stop burglaries that ends up killing innocents. In fact, it is just as if no one asked you and several did.Now how will you stop bad things from happening when many "good" guys are toting guns around? Will you be sure to have full background checks and registration? (as the NRA does of course since they are very responsible). Will you have mental tests and mandatory anger management courses? Will you mandate guns that only the rightful owner can fire (which unlike guns that can't shoot at people already exist)? (as the NRA supports since they are very responsible and do not put guns above lives).Or will you just allow everyone to arm themselves to shoot the 'bad' guys? Or shoot the guy who gets into a road rage and pulls his gun? Or shoot the guy before he takes your open carry gun from you when he bumps into you?Since you couldn't answer the nightstand issue can you answer this one?

Sorry I missed that. I agree with you there.So a gun in the home is useless for defense against the bad guys? If it isn't immediately available you are out of luck if there is an armed home invasion. Is there any way a gun can be both safe and useful at home?That leaves us with personal carrying for self-defense against the bad guys. You have no personal views on what laws are necessary?

Usually? How do you know?I am inclined to agree that a large number of the bad guys are not very bright but that is not true of the most dangerous ones. You are dependent on there being appropriate "sinister sounds", that wake you up and give you time to unlock the gun, load it and get your wits around you. My guess (only a guess) is that you'd be lucky indeed for that to occur 1/4 of the time. The rest of the time the gun is useless at home.What about on the street?

Obviously, with your concern about the behavior of the US government your personal greatest hero is Edward Snowden, right?Edited by NosyNed, : No reason given.

As I pointed out to Marc9000, with your concern for government tyranny you must rank Edward Snowden as one of your greatest heros, right?