When I am confronted by someone declaring guns should be banned I ask them what they will do if one night while sleeping they discover an intruder in their house. The usual answer “Call 911”. If in the area police might arrive in 3-5 minutes. Now what? You and your family will have to survive until the authorities arrive. I usually hear silence at this point.
I will call 911 after the problem is dealt with. It is unrealistic to believe the police can protect my family 24/7 given time and distance to respond to each crisis.
The right “to keep and bear arms” is crystal clear to me.
Well, if your country wasn’t so ramped with gun crimes then maybe the right to bear arms would not be such an understatement. In Canada, taking into consideration the per capita population difference, we have significantly lower gun crimes than USA. WHY?, because we don’t believe in the right to bear arms and we trust our police to do the job efficiently without having to resort to weapons. The gun culture in USA has instilled upon American citizens an uneven perception of what is considered normal. Although it is in the US Constitution, it doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable to all. But when Charleton heston the Great Moses stands up with a rifle at prior NRA meetings, then no wonder we think it is great to own a gun.Canada has it’s own gun problems but not to the extent of the USA. We may carry a long stick instead like the Rock in Walking Tall:)
In a free society there are many challenges created by that very freedom. Its part of the price of being free, as is vigilance. The vid clip was posted mostly in jest, but does represent the responsibility that each citizen has in seeing to their own safety. As was said earlier, the police can not be everywhere at once,(unless you happen to live next to a donut shop) so even if you are able to call 911, there is little guarantee you will be alive to receive them.( I will stipulate that the greater part of breakins do not result in mortal conflict ) If you have the gift of time, it is better to evacuate, then call police, and wait for them to do their job from a safe location. This is the smart play. But circumstances are not always in favor of escape, leaving you in the midnight hour awakening to a looming figure holding a gun, or knife to your person demanding you surrender whatever it is they think you have. Sadly in this case, there isnt much one can do but acquiesce, and hope for a break in order to summon help, or act on your own.
Just having a forearm is no insurance that you will win the encounter, everyone in the house learning its proper safe use from a qualified instructor, and having a plan in case it needs to be used, (one your whole family is familiar with) and having the means of alarm, and defense in place where it may be gotten to and utilized effectively in a crisis.
This type of plan is little different from a family fire drill/evacuation plan many wise people have, and practice. The whole point is to survive,by use of deadly force if need be.
Home invasions are on the increase world wide,as are other types of violent crime. Usually driven by criminal gangs,or drugged up morons.
There are non-lethal devices for home protection, the tazer, chemical sprays, and even a booby trap device that will empty a large can of mace into a house if the place is invaded, making it too difficult to go through, so they leave. Just dont come home drunk, and forget about it,:mrgreen:
It’s gotta be a lot better than not having a forearm, 'cos without a forearm you ain’t got a hand with a finger to pull the trigger.
I can’t follow this kind of thinking.
Maybe you live in a more violent or fearful part of the world than I do, but in the area I’ve lived in, in the same house, since the early '80s we’ve had within a kilometre or so of my house a couple of very nasty home invasions and abductions and sexual assaults of young teenage girls; a drug gang shooting gone wrong in the street, by shooting the wrong bloke, as these blokes aren’t rocket scientists; an armed robbery at a pub with a fatal shooting of guard (which could have been avoided if the civilian dummies who run the police call centre had worked out that a couple of blokes sitting in a car in boiler suits etc was a bit suspicious, as the caller rightly worked out); a few other nasty home invasions; and no doubt lots of other nasty crimes I don’t know about because they don’t make the papers.
I got rid of my guns after several of the offences I mentioned, partly becuase kids were on the way and I figured that an inaccessilbe unloaded gun is no use in an emergency but a readily accessible loaded gun in the house is far more likely to harm one of my kids than be of use when some mongrel appears at the end of my bed at 3 a.m. with a shotgun and cable ties.
I don’t feel the need to be armed against the very, very, very remote chance of a home invasion because, despite there being a few very nasty ones in my area over more than a quarter of a century, the odds are still so small that it’s not worth worrying about.
It seems to some of us here that some Americans are unduly fearful of being attacked, whether in their homes or as a nation, and that they expend too much effort in preparing their defences against very remote risks. Sure, there are some people here who take the same view, but they’re no more likely to be attacked than I am. They just worry about it more and want to be armed against things that have almost no chance of happening to them. The rest of us just get on with life, accepting that arming ourselves against the trivial risk of a home invasion is about as sensible as refusing to go outside in case we get a melanoma.
And I had a melanoma about a dozen years ago. That hasn’t stopped me going out in the sun or surf, but if I adopted the same approach to that as the “arm yourself against a possible home invasion” crowd I’d have spent the last dozen years in a dark room smothering myself in sunscreen.
I just don’t see the point in taking extreme steps to protect oneself against very remote risks.
Quote:
“Originally Posted by tankgeezer View Post
Just having a forearm is no insurance that you will win the encounter …
It’s gotta be a lot better than not having a forearm, 'cos without a forearm you ain’t got a hand with a finger to pull the trigger.”
There I go typing without my glasses again, Ha! no matter, I know folks from other lands do not understand our thing about firearms, (or forearms for that matter,)this is just the way we are.And there are some who would never consider owning a gun of any kind. I live in a pretty safe place, and do not keep a firearm at the ready, I do have a tazer in case of trouble, and chemicals too. Since its just my old dog and me, no reason to go Navarone, out the window for us once the mace is loosed.
There are places, mostly inner cities, where trouble can almost be counted on, so there you will find most such types of home defense. Most Americans do not keep firearms for home defense, just the usual hunting ,and marksmanship stuff. (if they keep one at all,) Home alarm systems are quite popular though. The clip I posted shows a man defending himself against a determined person. And though he will not face punishment for shooting the criminal, he will face charges of going armed in public, and having a concealed weapon. Its up to the jury to decide what that will bring, in many cases the least level of offense if anything. The gun he used will however be confiscated, requiring a judge’s order to be returned. We have a saying here, “Better to be judged by 12, than carried by 6”
I agree, even if we had the same gun laws as in America I still wouldn’t have a gun in my home. The risk to my family from having a gun in the house far outweighs any risk from intruders.
The problem with not having guns is that most criminals break the law while in possession of a weapon, many times a firearm. Not trying to come off as macho man but I will not allow someone to put their hands on me or my loved ones intent on bodily harm. I will soon be 58. I am too damn old to get invilved in a physical altercation. Law abiding citizens own guns that are registered to the them at the time of purchase. Firearms used in the commission of criminal activities are illegally imported or stolen.Laws making the possession of non-hunting firearms by private individuals illegal would mean little to criminals. And I really don’t know how our government could legislate illegal weapons out of existence.
I live in a small town about 20 miles from Atlanta which is a major metropolis. I chose to live here due to the traffic congestion and the crime rate in certain areas. I drive to and work an area that happens to have the highest rate of capital crimes in Atlanta. I legally carry a firearm. Over the last 10 years I have drawn my pistol when working quite late. Thankfully I have not
discharge my weapon but in 2 cases I am certain I would have been assaulted by multiple individuals. I sincerely believe displaying a weapon saved me a trip to the hospital or possibly the funeral home.
Sometimes, I feel we Brits and you Americans are much further apart in our way of thinking than merely the width of the Atlantic. We have different histories and our cultures have developed seperately, for the most part. We have in the past had our share of bandits and highwaymen, but it doesn’t compare with the ‘frontier culture’ of the early American settlers which, in my opinion, has evolved into the situation in the US today.
British soldiers are trained to think of the rifle as being almost a part of themselves. It becomes a part of our psyche. Yet, I must confess that since leaving the forces, I haven’t touched a rifle let alone fired one, and I don’t miss it. :oops:
The argument here would be that if we all armed ourselves against marauders, the more the likelihood that the maraurders would become better armed and more likely to use their weapons.
By the way, like the new emoticons - must keep practising. :army: :lol:
Then why didn’t it happen in Australia where there was also a violent frontier, and a much more violent and brutal basis to the nation in the convict era beforehand? Or in New Zealand, where full-on wars were fought during the prime American frontier period 1840-80?
No disrepect to our American cousins, but the events which led to the War of Independence were relatively minor in the whole scheme of things. They were more in the nature of serious irritants to the colonial merchants than the denials of human rights they have subsequently been portrayed as. “No taxation without representation” as a rallying cry would have been meaningless to many of the newly industrialised British workers drawn into Blake’s ‘dark satanic mills’ in the second half of the 18th century.
I think that part of the difference between Americans and other nations which derived from British settlement is that America was in part populated initially by dissenters from the English orthodoxy and prospered, despite being reliant upon convict labour as was Australia but in an earlier period in the plantations and, unlike Australia, as indentured labour for free settlers rather than punishment battalions under the Crown.
By the time Australia and New Zealand were being discovered, never mind settled, America was an established nation in waiting (even allowing for the complexities caused by, for example, what is now New York being held by the Dutch). It had a solid core of intellectual, professional and commercial people who were free of the oppressive class systems of England and Europe. This showed in the Declaration of Independence which incorporated and expressed the then radical ideas of the likes of Thomas Paine which were regarded as a form of political heresy in England at the time, while France was undergoing a revolution based upon the same radical notions that all men are equal and other notions embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
The end result was that America broke away from the stifling class system of England and Europe partly because it was an aggressive mercantile community, and prospered because of it.
That same mercantile aggression brought with it the usual fear of the rich that they will be robbed. Which is seen almost daily in American defence and political statements about defending America and keeping it strong.
Countries like Australia and New Zealand never achieved, and never will achieve, anything like the dominance America has. They were therefore forced to develop a different way of protecting what they acquired. Which, oddly enough, was to hitch their wagon to America during and post-WWII, although New Zealand unhitched its wagon a bit over nuclear issues.
So, on one interpretation, it might be seen that America developed a culture of standing on its own two feet to acquire and defend what it acquired, while much smaller countries like Australia and New Zealand developed a culture of looking to a bigger brother to protect them, which was the inevitable result of being colonies which never asserted their own independence but merely transferred their dependence from Britain to America. Thus, peoples with no history of aggressive national independence are unable to understand the thinking of a people with a long and strong history of aggressive national indepedence, part of which involves a strong notion of self-reliance in many respects including self-defence at the personal level by gun or otherwise.
(This made sense when I started it, but whatever sense it had got a bit lost in the time taken to type it. Anyway, it can stay there for discussion, or derision. )
I think that is an international standard.
I don’t think the gun is the issue.
It’s why people want one.
I’ve hardly fired one in about twenty five years, apart from a .22 a few times a year or two ago on a club range with my son (And a waste of time that was from my point of view, as all the club guns were scoped!).
I don’t miss not having guns, although a few were always around the house when I was a kid and I was keen on them until my early twenties. Then I just gradually lost interest in shooting defenceless rabbits etc in what was a hopelessly unfair contest. Meanwhile some of my keener mates used to talk about going ‘hunting’.
‘Hunting’ a rabbit? Yeah! Right!
Hunt a pig, maybe, because if you miss or wound a wild boar the galloping mad bastard might come back and slash you, which seems a bit more of a fair contest. Especially fair when, as is bound to happen, your gun malfunctions at the critical moment. When it comes down to a race to avoid a tusk up the clacker and reaching a tree for safety, that seems pretty fair to me. And to the boar, probably. :o
It’s the chicken and the egg problem though, isn’t it?
In another form, it’s the police argument that the crims are better armed so we have to be better armed, which just creates another arms race.
While I accept that it’s a lot harder to work out why it happens and to devise and implement ways of changing it than just to try to outgun the opposition, the real problem in most instances is why do a few people in the community choose to arm themselves and a tiny proportion of them actually use their weapons, whether guns, knives, machetes, or whatever?
However, given a choice between having to carry a gun to save your life from murderous muggers or whatever and not carrying a gun in a society where the risk of harm was so low that nobody needed to arm themselves, which would you prefer?
There has been a steady and significant worsening here for the past twenty years or so of weapons-related street crime. I’d like to work out why that happened and change it so we could go back to the time when our police didn’t carry any weapon apart from a small cosh in their pocket (and rarely used it on anyone except a heavy crim handcuffed to a chair in a police station. )
Because you, as do the Kiwis, play cricket, old chap. :lol:
No disrepect to our American cousins, but the events which led to the War of Independence were relatively minor in the whole scheme of things.
The Seven Years War had much t do with it. The rest was as a result of a certain niavity on the part of the Brits.
I think that part of the difference between Americans and other nations which derived from British settlement is that America was in part populated initially by dissenters from the English orthodoxy and prospered, despite being reliant upon convict labour as was Australia but in an earlier period in the plantations and, unlike Australia, as indentured labour for free settlers rather than punishment battalions under the Crown.
By the time Australia and New Zealand were being discovered, never mind settled, America was an established nation in waiting (even allowing for the complexities caused by, for example, what is now New York being held by the Dutch). It had a solid core of intellectual, professional and commercial people who were free of the oppressive class systems of England and Europe. This showed in the Declaration of Independence which incorporated and expressed the then radical ideas of the likes of Thomas Paine which were regarded as a form of political heresy in England at the time, while France was undergoing a revolution based upon the same radical notions that all men are equal and other notions embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
Australia and New Zealand’s stories are different to that of America’s. I don’t think a direct comparison really works. Interesting that Thomas Paine had such a roller-coaster political life. He was probably inspired by John Locke, as were the likes of Jefferson and Franklin. So much so that one could be forgiven for thinking Locke had written the Declaration of Independence.
The end result was that America broke away from the stifling class system of England and Europe …
…and developed their own. :lol:
So, on one interpretation, it might be seen that America developed a culture of standing on its own two feet to acquire and defend what it acquired, while much smaller countries like Australia and New Zealand developed a culture of looking to a bigger brother to protect them, which was the inevitable result of being colonies which never asserted their own independence but merely transferred their dependence from Britain to America. Thus, peoples with no history of aggressive national independence are unable to understand the thinking of a people with a long and strong history of aggressive national indepedence, part of which involves a strong notion of self-reliance in many respects including self-defence at the personal level by gun or otherwise.
(This made sense when I started it, but whatever sense it had got a bit lost in the time taken to type it. Anyway, it can stay there for discussion, or derision. )
It still makes sense.
I’m sure there is much truth in all you say, but I don’t think that that is the whole story. The lawlessness in the frontier states contributed much to the gun carrying ethos. And the fact that the individual states have a certain independence from the Federal government also contributes. A certain mindset as to one state attacking another etc. ‘Remember the Alamo’ and all that.
I think that is an international standard.
Of course. It just surprises me that after many years of gun-toting I never miss it. Neither do my chums. They much prefer to arm themselves with a pint.
I don’t think the gun is the issue.
It’s why people want one.
Indeed.
I’ve hardly fired one in about twenty five years, apart from a .22 a few times a year or two ago on a club range with my son (And a waste of time that was from my point of view, as all the club guns were scoped!).
I don’t miss not having guns, although a few were always around the house when I was a kid and I was keen on them until my early twenties. Then I just gradually lost interest in shooting defenceless rabbits etc in what was a hopelessly unfair contest. Meanwhile some of my keener mates used to talk about going ‘hunting’.
‘Hunting’ a rabbit? Yeah! Right!
As I read the first paragraph, I was wondering about ‘Bunnie-bashing’…that’s a relief! :army: I’ll stand down. :lol:
It’s the chicken and the egg problem though, isn’t it?
It is. I was reading certain articles on the web which discussed the arming of former Gurkha soldiers employed as security guards on cruise liners. Interestingly, it was an American newspaper (I’ll have to check if I can find it again, when I have time). Anyway, they were making the same comments regarding escalation. A certain irony there, methinks. :neutral:
We still pride ourselves that our Bobbies are unarmed. However this can become hazardous for them on account of the same drug/gang related crime which has increased over the past twenty to thirty years.
Quick question…if Bobbies in England aren’t armed…do they have weapons that they can get from their vehicles? Police here in the US have sidearms, but also can keep shotguns in their vehicles.
My understanding is that they do not. There are Special Patrol Groups (SPG) or some such like that they are able to call upon when armed criminals are encountered. These are pretty controversial on account of people being shot in circumstances which might be described as unnecessary use of lethal force.
Again we face the same problems and there is a great cry for more Bobbies on the beat, as there aren’t enough of them. However, the Bobbies complain that they are bogged down with paperwork, but there has been some success stories some inner-city areas where the Met. have managed to get more Plod out there.
I wasn’t there and am not in possession of the full facts. But from what I saw on the news and the newspapers, and the reasons the Police gave for opening fire, it seems to me that his being shot was unnecessary.
That’s the same period during which we went from being a country where you could cop a flogging from a bunch of thugs, but it was usually fists and boots.
Knives were weak dago acts, about the level of biting and scratching.
Now a lot of Anglo kids here carry knives, along with various other ethnic groups of more recent arrival who tend not only to carry them but to use them rather more enthusiastically than the Anglos.
So, what happened in the past two or three decades to change your and my cultures, where knife crime is a major concern in both countries, and entirely foreign to our modern developement until recently?
Migration is one possibility, but we had a lot of migrants fron knife cultures post-war who never introduced it here.
Popular culture, such as television and film? I don’t see much evidence of it there.
I don’t think we have officers on foot patrol. Maybe still in the big northern cities (i.e. New York, Chicago), but I’ve not seen any in the cities I’ve lived in in TX.
Poor Bobbies, hope the Special Patrol Groups (?) can get places quickly.
In Britain? I think it probably stems from the collapse of the manufacturing industry which came about in the late Seventies, early Eighties. Whole communities left without employment. The despair and then the crime which follows, and the opportunities it offers for organized crime to get into these community areas with drugs etc. Which creates more crime in order to feed the drug dependency.
That’s probably way over simplified. I’m sure that the crime culture has evolved a lot since then, but I think that is the root cause.
Anyway, it can stay there for discussion, or derision. )