Summations Only

Sorry, I was thinking that all your arguments about knowing when to draw and when not to, when to run, how much traning is necessary and so on was based on some sort of actual personal experience. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I not trying to provide a good reason for owning a gun nor am I arguing that you're safer from crime if you own a gun.I'm trying to disabuse the notion that you can only be less safe with a gun by explaining how the statistics that were used for it don't really lead to the conclusion.I don't believe that the data is available to show whether or not carrying a gun makes you more safe. If I was arguing for an increase in safety then, yes, I would go more to that route. I haven't seen any measurements of the deterrent effect. I don't think its really something that we can gather data about because we can't really measure a non-crime.And for me personally, I don't have any family to contribute personal risk to so the presumed safety increase doesn't have that outweighing it. So I doubt that I have, personally, reduced safety by owning a gun.

Well I apologize if I've mislead you. I haven't been supporting a positive position regarding that. I'm just being skeptical and doubtful of the claim. I don't get why I can't argue against a claim without people assuming that I'm making an argument for the counter-claim. I don't think the evidence supports the claim, but I'm not trying to prove the counter-claim either.

This is effectively a reply to Message 782 but moderators have requested that posts on this subject be posted to this thread instead. Oh. My. God. What kind of live-in-fear-batton-down-the-hatches kind of world do you want to live in? I just don't know how to convey to you, and like minded Americans, just how alien and demented this suggestion of yours sounds to so many of us around the world.Faith, imagine a school. It has a climbing frame shaped like a pirate ship in the playground and some impressively old trees in two of the corners. There is a slightly decrepid looking flowerbed where in the spring 5 year olds plant seeds as part of their first foray into the joys of scientific investigation. The closest thing to onsite security is Mr Aspinall the slightly surly janitor armed with his broom and Val the office administrator who holds reign over the entrance door buzzer. When Val isn't present the slightly dippy (but surprising authoritative) finance officer, Mrs Jackson, is on buzzer duty. None of the teachers have guns. In all likelihood none of them have ever even held a gun or seen one close up. To the children guns are no more or less real or part of their lives than the Batmobile, time-travelling phone-boxes or talking robots that can turn into an array of vehicles. The notion that gun-armed security guards should be present would cause parents, teachers, governers and indeed the entire nation to recoil in horror at the idea of turning infant schools into places that resemble maximum security penetentiaries rather than places of learning and care for innocent little kids.Where is this school? Did I invent it? Might it be an actual school in a ridiculously affluent and priveliged quaint little English village that is so far removed from most normal experience as to be irrelevant? No. None of the above. It is my son's school in inner city South London. An area with all the social problems you would expect of such an urban setting.The mindset that thinks gun-armed security guards in infant schools is a good thing rather than something out of a dystopian nightmare is a mindset that I just cannot, and don't think I ever will be able to, identify with or understand.When all is said and done I think it really depends on whether you view the metaphorical bolts on the door to be a way of keeping the bogey-man out or a form of self-imprisonment. Is liberty achieved by having the right to own guns? Or is true liberty achieved when you live in a society where guns aren't commonly needed or present? Which should we be aiming for? Again - I can only try to convey to you the astonishment and bewilderment that so many outside the US experience when confronted with this kind of talk. The people you are talking of are not seen as the defenders of freedom againt a tyrannical government (as you seem to see them). If anything the specific sort of gun-nuts in question are viewed as the ones to be feared with their arsenals of weapons, bunkers, years-supplies-of-tinned-food-just-in-case and talk of over-throwing democratically elected governments because the democratic process hasn't yielded the sort of "true Americanism" their dangerous sounding and rather narrow ideology would prefer.I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm simply trying to convey how most of us who are non-armed-yet-still-members-of-advanced-Western-democracies see the sort of views you are putting forward.

Answering you seems like a lost cause but I guess I can try. I know very well how you guys think, it's all over your posts, you don't need to carry on about it. You have no feeling for the situation and ought to stay out of it.RAZD asked for regulations, I suggested the only one that makes sense to me GIVEN THE INCITING EVENT THAT BROUGHT ALL THIS UP, the attack on the school children. DISARMING THE NATION IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO THAT PROBLEM, THE VERY IDEA IS ABSURDITY IN THE EXTREME AND IT CAN ONLY CREATE MORE PROBLEMS, but it's the one all you guys start screaming about when these awful murders happen. Take guns away from the good people while the crazies who commit the murders continue to have access to them. You think my solution sounds bizarre?What a nonsense idea you have about what it would be like having some security guards or armed teachers around. The friendly cop on the block is more my image, and nobody would have the slightest idea about teachers who have concealed carry guns, why should they? Your imagination is working overtime to no good purpose.Yes I know YOUR bogeyman is the people who are in favor of guns, but that picture has been painted for you by the leftwing nuts WE don't trust.There is no feeling at all of a gun culture in this country, by the way, UNTIL THESE MURDERS OCCUR, and it's only when all YOU nuts come out with your idiotic NONSOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM THAT WOULD IN FACT MAKE IT WORSE, that you hear from the ones whose rights are being threatened by your idiotic nonsolution.Forgive us if the fact that when such idiotic nonsolutions are so immediately proposed to a situation they could not possibly affect for the better, if we suspect the whole reason for the uproar is to deprive us of our rights. There is nothing rational in relation to the problem at hand, protecting children or anybody from these homicidal maniacs, in the gun control fanaticism that is the knee-jerk response to them, THEREFORE it looks like somebody just wants the good guys disarmed.So far you haven't felt the effects of the disarming of you Brits although some have felt them and the rest of you scoff at them. Home invasions and increased crime is no small result from my point of view.But when I talk about circumstances changing, it IS when you take away people's guns that they BECOME vulnerable to criminal activity and all kinds of horrors that otherwise just don't occur, and don't occur in America either except in certain violence-ridden areas. The gun people of this country are quiet law-abiding people, you only hear from them when you threaten to take away their second amendment right.BUT we know from history that there was a good reason to have our second amendment and some of us are smart enough to know that those reasons are still just as real as they ever were. Let us quietly keep our guns and you'll never hear from us. Take them away and that's when the circumstances can change and the reason to have them becomes apparent.I think you Brits and Australians who've lost your guns are sitting ducks for the next Hitler you are so sure isn't going to happen to you. You might want to leave US our guns at least. Tangle scoffed at the fact that Americans sent guns to Brits when there was the threat of a Nazi invasion, but the Brits of that time appreciated it even if you people have lost all sense of history and of the fact that there is real evil in this world that calls for self defense measures. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We were sitting ducks for the last Hitler, Faith.Blitzkrieg didn't worry overmuch about homesteaders with rifles - they were more concerned about tank deployment, air cover and artillery. You tried to make this point about Switzerland, completely missing the fact that the Swiss's own strategists knew that Hitler could take Berne with a single Panzer regiment. I didn't scoff Faith, I think i was a wonderful gesture of support, I just pointed out that it was at best a PR exercise, like kids collecting bottle-tops for African famine.Our real protection against another war in Europe is through our institutions and treaties - the formation of the EU and NATO and the plethora of trading agreements between the Western Democracies plus the joint armies that we deploy protect us. No amount of small arms in the hands of amateurs could possible stop a modern army. That's just a crazy idea.

It's the good people who are committing a good number of the murders. Many murders could be eliminated if there were no gun available when a good person becomes angry or distraught or upset or careless or crazy. Rights have to be balanced against public safety. 30,000 gun deaths a year is a significant public safety issue. Automobile deaths peaked around 50,000 annually in the early 1970's, and automobile safety regulations have reduced that to around 34,000 in a recent year. That's a 1/3 reduction over a period when annual automobile passenger miles increased by 1/3. We can't seek restrictions on car ownership because cars are economically essential, but the same isn't true of guns. A gun is more likely to be used against someone the owner knows than a criminal. Purchasing a gun puts one's life and the lives of those one knows and loves in greater danger. The "quiet law-abiding" gun people commit thousands of murders a year. Times change. When the 2nd amendment was written a gun was a muzzle-loading musket, women couldn't vote, men could own slaves, and there was no income tax. Except that it's not true that we never hear from gun owners. They or someone in their household commit thousands of murders of year. We hear plenty from gun owners.By the way, the second amendment is not about defending oneself against the government. It's about making sure the people who form government militias have their own guns, because back in the 18th century soldiers owned their own weapons. But today governments supply the weapons and the amendment is an anachronism.--Percy

How did armed guards help at Columbine? Virginia Tech? Fort Hood?How did armed guards help when Reagan was shot?Would you not agree that Reagan was surrounded by highly trained attentive secret service agents, people more highly trained and attentive than your (actually NRA's) proposed armed guards?Do you accept that their presence did nothing to prevent, stop or reduce the shooting that occurred?This is NOT a valid concept for protection, and it certainly is not the direction I would like to see schools go: I am in agreement with Straggler on this 100%.It's ridiculous. Give it up. Curiously, in my opinion, "good people" are people that do not own the kinds of weapons used in mass shootings and who would be supportive of a renewal of the ban on assault type weapons and on assault type ammo loading systems. Recent polls (ABC) show that the majority of Americans agree, and that even among gun owners there is more support for such a ban than there is against it.Tonto and the Lone Ranger aren't real, Faith.Enjoy.

Yes, you were, and you weren't expecting it, were you? That's the perennial problem, nobody expects a Hitler to show up in this world so nobody does anything to be prepared and yet somehow it happens, out of the blue. Some of us see the world shaping up for the next one. Too bad it's only some of us.And sure, you can't defend against tanks and bombs but you might be able to defend your family when they come on foot and that does happen. Germany DID disarm the nations they invaded so they could just round people up and kill them. The Turks disarmed the Armenians etc. etc. etc. It's something to think about, and it seems crazy crazy crazy NOT to think about it. I call that scoffing. And it's SO sadly wrong. For one thing it had nothing to do with PR since hardly anybody knew about it. For another I'm sure you'd love to have a gun handy when certain things start happening. You didn't get invaded then, which is what the guns were for. I'd be laughing myself to death if I weren't crying so hard. Criminals don't obey laws on a global scale just as they don't on a local petty scale. Wasn't Chamberlain beside himself with joy because he thought he had an agreement with Hitler? Who then, golly gee, broke it? There is a horrific evil brewing behind the scenes of the EU that you are blinded to for some reason, although the loss of national sovereignties bit by bit OUGHT to be a clue. Nobody is trying to stop a modern army, that's just one of the straw man arguments on your side that befogs the issues. The point is to be able to defend yourself in close quarters and perhaps gain time to escape and hide or whatever is necessary when the time comes. Being totally unarmed means you're an easy target, easy to herd off to concentration camp, easy to line up alongside a ditch and shoot in the head, easy to get however they want to get you. Why make it easy for them?I guess you all think we've finally achieved the perfect world in which everybody is just a nice guy?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How did Gandhi defeat England Faith? What weapon did he use? Is India free of English colonial control because of Gandhi or because of weapons?Was this same weapon used in Egypt to defeat Mubarek?Violence is not the answer to violence, it only perpetuates it.Enjoy

I think the answer to how Gandhi defeated England is that England was basically civilized. A Hitler would not have honored Gandhi's methods. This is where you guys are SO naive.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The British Empire, you know, one of those countries that tried to conquer the world .... and at one time controlled more of the world than Hitler? That one?British Empire - Wikipedia

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... At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power.[1] ...

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History is told by the winners.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : ..Edited by RAZD, : ..Edited by RAZD, : ..

Yeah, that one, and your making a moral equivalence between the British Empire and the Third Reich is nauseating.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No Faith, what is nauseating is that you fail to understand that the English Empire was not all tea, crumpets and cucumber sandwiches, and that they had their ruthless oppression side (as has the US and other countries).The difference between their level of oppression and Nazi Germany does not account for why and how Gandhi prevailed. Oppression is oppression even if it isn't the worst oppression ever known, at the end of the day it is still oppression.Nor does the level of oppression imposed by Mubarek explain how he was overthrown.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : day not dat