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Stats show clearly that armed self defence is worse than just running for it. Not manly or macho, but if you want to live then run.

it's funny how stats can clearly show anything when you don't present any evidence or quote any source.

rates of injury by victim's method of protection

If the police don't hit the bad guys with every round, imagine the carnage if a bunch of civilians started shooting.

From here : "Another study examined newspaper reports of gun incidents in Missouri, involving police or civilians. In this study, civilians were successful in wounding, driving off, capturing criminals 83% of the time, compared with a 68% success rate for the police. Civilians intervening in crime were slightly less likely to be wounded than were police. Only 2% of shootings by civilians, but 11% of shootings by police, involved an innocent person mistakenly thought to be a criminal."

I don't see how you can use a "What If . . ." scenario based on a past event, make some blind guesses about how other people might have responded in this hypothetical situation, and then contort your fantasy into an argument against the idea of law abiding citizens carrying firearms.

I accept your possible(but improbable) scenario as a suggestion that it would have been extremely bad judgment on the part of the ID theft victim to pull a gun in this particular situation. After that, your argument just devolves into foolishness.

Every time the question of liberalizing concealed weapons laws comes up, gun control nuts use these fantasies "Oh heavens, our streets will become like the wild West!" "Minor traffic accidents will end up as gun battles!" etc. etc. and they're proven wrong every time. Many former gun-control states have passed "Shall Issue" laws compelling the state governments to implement a permit system for concealed carry. One of the more notable ones was Florida in 1987.

"In Florida, for example, a murder rate that was 36% above the national average when carry reform went into effect in 1987, fell by 1991 to 4% below the national average."

http://www.rkba.org/research/cramer/shall-issue.ht ml

No blood in the streets. No western movie shootouts. Just more evidence of the well documented deterrent effect of law abiding citizens empowered to defend themselves.

I recommend you read The Unabridged Second Amendment, as well as A Nation of Cowards before you publicize such thoughtless positions.

As I said above, if the Constitution, the way the ACLU interprets it, does not give the right to bear arms, then why would they fight for that right?

Perhaps because the Constitution *gives* no rights at all, but rather clearly spells out the limits of what the government is allowed to do. Given that gun control isn't enumerated among those governmental powers, there's no good argument for *any* gun control, at the federal level at least. Just the same, let's look at the Bill of Rights, setting aside the Second Amendment for a moment:

Amendment I - Freedom of speech & press
Amendment III - No quartering of troops
Amendment IV - No unreasonable search/seizure
Amendment V - No forced self-incrimination, no testimony against oneself, eminent domain
Amendment VI - Right to speedy & public trial, right to cross-examine witnesses, right to counsel
Amendment VII - Right of trial by jury
Amendment VIII - No excessive bail or cruel & unusual punishment
Amendment XI - Enumeration of rights not to be construed to deny others
Amendment X - Powers not delegated to be reserved to states or to the people

Now, every single one of those outlines individual rights, and the Tenth additionally mentions the states. It's not consistent that the framers would have intended the Second Amendment to refer to the only collective right in a surrounding sea of individual rights, and there's no evidence to my knowledge in the Federalist Papers or any of the other documents of the period to indicate that it was intended to be anything other than an individual right. For those that point toward the National Guard as the "organized militia", I'd say that any organization that is in part funded by the federal government, and whose members the federal government can send halfway around the world to fight in an undeclared war against another country that represents little to no danger to the U.S., on their own soil, simply doesn't qualify as such. The National Guard is a militia, but it's a select militia, in real terms no different than a standing army under the control of the government, and certainly not a militia organized and maintained by the people.

This article goes into a bit more depth regarding U.S. vs. Miller for those that think the decision unquestionably represents a Supreme Court interpretation of the Second Amendment as being a collective right.

If you look at U.S. vs. Verdugo-Urquidez you will see differently. The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that the people in the Second Amendment are the same as in the Fourth, and the same as the term "person" or "people" anywhere else in the Constitution. Does anyone actually fucking think that the people in the preamble are different than the people in the Second Amendment? I hope I'm not misunderstanding this post, because it looks like a troll to me.

Your answer is to run away to someone in charge, and that just exacerbates the problem.

Since you won't call the cops, I think that some of my buddies and I should come over to your place and see if you have anything we could use...

Bring it. You won't like the consequences.

Hey, you've inspired me! I'm gonna go home and slap my wife and kids around, and if they complain, I'll tell them to quit being pussies. I mean, I'm bigger than they are, and my friends are higher status than theirs (bankers and local politicians vs housewives and kids), so the situation's almost identical to school bullying. Thanks for the tip! I'll never be a pussy again!

If you can't recognize the difference between "assault" and "self defense," then it's your loss. The difference does exist, though, and it's quite definite. "Assault" is when you initiate force against the innocent; "self defense" is when you, as the innocent victim, stand up to your attacker. The differences exist in definition (see previous), law (one is legal, the other not), and, most critically, morality (self defense is not only acceptable, it is the only morally correct course of action; to allow onesself to be subjugated by another who has no authority to do so is a crime against the Creator himself). I suggest Jeff Snyder's A Nation of Cowards if you want to understand what I mean; he expresses it far more eloquently than I could.

However, about a while ago I had the opportunity to fire several clips (or magazines? I forget) with a 9mm pistol in a large group of other first time shooters.

Let me direct you to the opening section of A Nation Of Cowards for an alternate perspective on the value of human life.

Check out Jeffrey Snyder's piece A Nation of Cowards

It's a great read, and I agree with it almost completely. Also, feel free to email me for any further debate.

It's in the U.S. Code (10 USC 311) that all able-bodied males between the age of 17 and 44 are part of the unorganized militia. See this page for the applicable sections of the U.S. Code.

People with guns in their house are 43 times more likely to be shot in their own home than people without a gun in their house. You're better off without the gun.

This turns out not to be the case. The 43:1 ratio is a myth. If you take out the suicides, accidents, and justifiable homicides, and consider actual murders compared to actual killing in self-defense, the ratio looks more like 4:1. But most gun owners avoid shooting people as much as they can, and 98% of the time defend themselves without killing anyone, so the actual ratio looks more like 1:75 (75 people saved by guns for each one lost). Follow the link for support of the 1:75 claim. See also here.

Dr. Lott has shown that using a gun to defend yourself gives you the best chance to escape an attack unharmed.

steveha

I've heard 43-to-1 and 2.7-to-1 (usually rounded to 3), based on some articles by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, but 10-to-1 is new to me.

Although Kellerman claimed something like "a gun in the house is 43 times more likely to kill a member of that household than an intruder," he failed to mention that people living in a home without a gun are 99 times more likely to be killed in that house than a burglar.

See: Is My Own Gun More Likely to be Used Against Me or My Family?

and this section of Dr. Edgar Suter's Guns in the Medical Literature: A Failure of Peer Review.

A fatal shot with a semi automatic pistol is as likely to kill as a fatal shot with an automatic rifle

Considering the definition of a "fatal shot," doesn't that go without saying?

I've heard 43-to-1 and 2.7-to-1 (usually rounded to 3), based on some articles by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, but 10-to-1 is new to me.

Although Kellerman claimed something like "a gun in the house is 43 times more likely to kill a member of that household than an intruder," he failed to mention that people living in a home without a gun are 99 times more likely to be killed in that house than a burglar.

See: Is My Own Gun More Likely to be Used Against Me or My Family?

and this section of Dr. Edgar Suter's Guns in the Medical Literature: A Failure of Peer Review.

A fatal shot with a semi automatic pistol is as likely to kill as a fatal shot with an automatic rifle

Considering the definition of a "fatal shot," doesn't that go without saying?

The AK-47 may not be quite as nice of a weapon in some respects, but it's a much better hack. It is bog simple, cheap, reliable, and ubiquitous. It can be made out of sheet metal without so much as power tools, much less the complex machining required for the AR-15. Its gas system and magazines - the most common points of failure on an automatic rifle - are extremely robust. Over 50 years later, the AK-47 and its derivatives are still the single most popular small arm in the world.

If you want a technical firearm hack, the roller-l ocking action on the Heckler & Koch G3 rifle (originally the Spanish CETME) definitely counts. It's an innovative and effective solution to a common firearm design problem. (How to keep the chamber locked during firing so the gun doesn't blow up in the user's face.) The H&K MP-5 submachinegun you see in games like Rainbow 6 and Half Life uses the same action.

As for the Glock, well... I own one. It's my favorite pistol. But a hack? No way. It's basically a 100-year-old design redone with better materials and manufacturing processes. All the technical innovations were done by someone else first. Glock just put them all together for the first time, and did a good job of marketing the result. Which is admirable, just not a hack.