I'm going to say this simply, hoping that you actually read it.
You are shooting to save your skin. You are shooting to neutralize the threat. Your end goal is to neutralize that threat. If that just so happens to require killing them, or you end up killing them in the process, so be it. But if you pull that gun out with the intention to KILL, and not to stop the attack, you will be a murderer in the jury's view.
It's not something I'm making up, and it's a very subtle difference. I am not saying you shouldn't kill someone in self defense. I'm saying that should not be your ultimate goal. And EVERY court in this country will agree with me.
Yeah, I covered that extensively in another post... thought I had at least mentioned it there. Black Talons are still JHP's, they just look and sound scarier. Kind of the EBR and other assault rifles phenomenon.:-)
http://www.allsafedefense.com/images/Bullets/Talon s&XT.jpg
It depends on the jury. A lot of lawyers would be able to put a spin on it that you had such a lethal weapon in your house and could have just as easily used pepper spray or something not lethal. I'm not of that school of thought, really... but.. personally, it probably wouldn't bother me unless:
A: There was evidence that he was shot while retreating (And of course, didn't have a weapon at the time)
B: There was evidence that he was shot while incapacitated
C: There was clearly no threat on your life or that of your loved ones
Not to say that any of those things we have me screaming "GUILTY!", but... if I knew you had shot him in the back, shot him while he was on the ground, or shot some guy who simply refused to lay down and clearly didn't have a weapon.... You'd probably be in some trouble...
For the most part, the tone of your post leads me to believe you haven't given much thought to how seriously sick you will feel having killed someone, even a threat on your life... You're glorifying it just a little too much for my comfort. Again... things like this:
"if I dont know you, you will be dead if you do not INSTANTLY obey my command to lie down on the floor facing away from me with your hands behind your head.
i WILL empty a round at your chest if you even hesitate for 1 second."
disappoint me a little, as I can't always justify this kind of indiscriminant "If you don't do A, I will ALWAYS DO B!!". Normally I could cut through it, but your sounding quite extreme (and not in a good way).
However, I do like the fact that you turn the house lighting on (Intruder can run away, thereby allowing the situation to fix itself, and you can positively identify whoever it is, to make sure it's not your father (or son, if I'm wrong) getting a midnight snack).
Or, I can hope for laws that would punish him severely if he ever illegally obtained a firearm or killed someone out of cold blood, and that that place will allow me the right to protect myself, acknowledging that the police can not be there 24/7, but I can.
Self defense ammo (At least from the older crowd's perspective) has two basic purposes... But first...
Normal, cheap, target ammunition for shooting at the range is typically "full metal jacket". This is typically a solid core of lead with a copper jacket bonded to it. I'll refer to this as FMJ.
The more expensive, "self defense" ammunition is called "jacketed hollowpoint" (Though there are variations). Typically this looks just like a FMJ bullet except they're essentially hollowed out on the front, and the front isn't jacketed with copper, but is instead just exposed lead. I'll refer to this as JHP.
FMJ ammunition is almost exclusively used at the shooting range, mainly because it is cheap. It goes boom, a bullet flies out, and it puts a hole in paper. That's really all anyone expects FMJ ammo to do. However, one thing you will notice if you ever try to dig up a bullet from the ground is that it travels quite a distance through the dirt. Even a low power (compared to, say, a.308win rifle) round such as a.40s&w handgun round will go 3 or 4 feet through dirt. When you dig it up, you'll find that the bullet has not deformed much at all, and is almost pristine. This is penetration. Penetration in self defense ammo is almost always a bad thing. If I shoot a BG (Bad guy) and the bullet goes through him, through three walls, and strikes an innocent someone, I'm in deep shit. That's the biggest concern with penetration. Next to that, and the physics geeks here can probably fill in the details... When a bullet passes all the way through something and keeps going, that means that not all of the energy the bullet was carrying was transferred to what was being shot at. Penetration is mostly where JHP comes in... http://www.ammolab.com/45GAP%20Test%20photo.jpg Notice bullet #19 in that picture. That's basically what an unfired JHP (Speer's Gold Dot line) looks like. The idea here is that when the bullet strikes a surface, it peels the bullet open. The impact starts the bullet flattening, and then the copper jacket gets pulled back, pulling the lad with it, mushrooming into, ideally, as flat of a chunk of lead as possible. This does a few things: It keeps the bullet from passing all the way through what's being shot at (Or the wall in case you miss) and it also transfers more of the bullet's energy to whatever it is hitting. Now, this energy transfer isn't actually what "stops" someone. It's not like it counteracts their forward momentum, because however much it pushes them around, your gun would have to recoil even more than that... But "stopping power" is actually its ability to cause sufficient trauma to stop an attacker. There are a few different kinds of trauma, the most basic of which are the "wound channel", which is the actual hole the bullet makes, and basically a fluid shockwave that disrupts the tissues around the wound channel. I'm not going to get into those gory details, but you can imagine how a flattened bullet slapping your insides at 1200 feet per second is going to do a little more damage than a much tinier bullet zipping right through. When a JHP round fully flattens and then exits, you get a very prominent "exit wound", but we don't want that bullet going any farther than it has to.
Now, back to that picture I linked to.... This is a website that does tests on various ammunitions, by firing them into "ballistic gelatin", a substance that is supposed to approximate the viscosity and whatnot of a body. I assume it's cheaper than going out and buying beef brisket to shoot up.:-) All of the rounds there are fired rounds, but at the bottom, you might notice that bullet 19 is... well... not flat. The reason for this is that sometimes, things can clog a JHP bullet. If a JHP clogs with denim (As it did in that photo) then the JHP is much less likely to expand, because it doesn't have that exposed inner core. For the curious, where it says "200gr", that is the weight of the bullet. 1 grain is 0.00228571429 ounces. Grains are used for measuring the weight of
Again... No, you are NOT using it to kill. You are NOT making a conscious effort NOT to kill, however. If that's what it takes, so be it, but you are NOT shooting to kill. The reason multiple shots are looked down upon in Texas (And everywhere else) is that in court, if you put 8 rounds into someone, you are going to appear to the jury that you most certainly meant to kill them. If you tell the jury "Yeah, I meant to kill him" you are going to be found guilty of murder or somesuch. I did NOT say to shoot to wound. HOWEVER, if you shoot an assailant, it hits him in his pelvis, shatters it, and he falls to the ground, he's no longer a threat, and you can NOT (legally) continue to shoot him. Shooting to NEUTRALIZE THE THREAT is almost always going to be a fatal shot, because in QUICKLY incapacitating an assailant, you are in effect neutralizing them. My point is that your OVERALL GOAL is not to kill anone, it is to neutralize what you believe to be a reasonable threat on your life. Again, tell ANY jury, lawyer, judge, or police officer that you were "shooting to kill", and you will go to jail, and your CCW will be revoked.
I myself practice failure drills when I'm at the range. Two to the chest, and if the head is still where it was initially, one to the head. I know that if seeing the gun doesn't stop them, having it pointed at them doesn't stop them, having a round impact your chest doesn't stop them, having two rounds in their chest doesn't stop them, then I am going to have to resort to undoubtedly lethal force. It is a last resort when everything else has failed.
I am not being lax about guns. I am reiterating what your intentions SHOULD be, in order to keep you from doing something stupid (kill someone who is no longer a threat) or from being charged and convicted of murder because you decided to tell everyone that your intentions were to kill someone.
If your CCL instructor ever said "quick kill", "shoot to kill", or something similar, and anyone in charge of anything heard him, you can bet your ass he'd be fired, even in my favorite state of Texas.
Shooting to wound or maim is most certainly dangerous. But shooting specifically to kill is illegal, and to many people immortal. You shoot to stop the threat. All I am saying is that as soon as there is no more threat, YOU STOP SHOOTING. And so do I. If you shoot your bad guy twice in the chest and he's on the ground, and then you go shoot him in the heart to make sure he's dead, any jury will say that you just murdered a man in cold blood.
Shoot to live. If that requires killing someone, so be it, but if you shoot to KILL, you have the wrong frame of mind to be carrying a firearm.
(Again, after having had one of these guys call me a left-wing gun grabber or some such, let me reiterate that I do have a CCW, I open carry an XD40, and I've fairly closely followed Virginia law and pertinent self defense cases all over the U.S. I'm not trying to grab anyone's guns. And I vote Bush, despite him saying he wouldn't veto the AWB if it made it to him.)
Yeah, in fact I carry the Gold Dots in.40s&w because of that mundane name and that's what my hometown police department use. Yet another interesting tidbit... A police officer I know in Tennesee (Or however it is spelled), responding to my ribbing that police officers are typically not very knowledgeable or handy with their side arms (I had the pleasure of watching my local P.D. "qualify"... it was sad) told me that they are only required to go to the range once every 6 months. This is supposedly because if they do shoot someone in the line of duty, the prosecuting lawyer can't claim that the police officers are "killing machines". After seeing their performance at my local range, they're more like "hollywood bad guys" than "killing machines", and that's just not right! Recently, the Virginia State Police announced that they were replacing their "worn out" sidearms here: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0504/149133.html
The interesting thing here is that they are replacing them after seven years, and, get this, 5,000 rounds. For those who don't know, 5,000 rounds is nothing. I think I hit the 4,500 mark today and I've only had mine since December. Police officers don't train very often or consume much ammunition considering the Jedi-like abilities some law makers would have you believe they have... and if it's all just because they don't want to look like "killing machines" if they have to defend themselves in court... again... wow... sad...
Did you even read my post before you responded? The point of carrying a gun is two fold. Both to defend yourself, and to prevent anyone from putting you in a situation where you'd need to defend yourself. That guy jumping you in the alley, in my book, may 95% of the time deserve to die, but LEGALLY (and morally in most peoples' books) as soon as he is no longer mugging you, he's no longer breaking any laws. If you shoot him in the back, shoot him while he's on the ground (and with no means of attacking you) then you are not defending yourself, and you will be charged with murder or somesuch. And... I'm a liberal leftist tool?!!! Look at my post history! I'm ALMOST as far right as can be. I own a handgun, a permit to carry it concealed (even though I carry openly), vote Bush, drink Beer, and wear boxers. However, I am apparently a little left of you, because your decision to suddenly jump all over me and suggest that my handgun, in self defense, should be used to completely obliterate and kill EVERY criminal who crosses my path regardless of whether they are a continuing threat or not... that bothers me somewhat. People like you are the ones who give owners and carriers of handguns a bad rap. Spend some time around some responsible gun carriers instead of the Counter-Strike crowd that you play with, and you'll realize that "shooting to kill" will not only get you convicted of murder, but is also overstepping your right to self defense. ALWAYS shoot to neutralize the threat if you even have to shoot to do so. If, as in the scenario you describe, you wound him and he's still holding a gun, you absolutely shoot until he has stopped moving, is fleeing (and not shooting) or has dropped the gun. However, if you MISS and he turns and runs off or stops his approach and surrenders, even in my twisted book you shouldn't shoot him anymore. Please, gun grabbers, ignore this overzealous 16 year old who wants nothing more than to own a Glock and bust a cap in someone!!
Anyone ignoring the law but expecting to receive protection from it is abusing the system, and as such, deserves no protection. Well, maybe not NO protection, but certainly not as much as Joe Workingman.
Since so many people (myself included) are interested in the suggestion that this fella should carry a gun, I direct you to a more relevant forum: http://www.hs2000talk.com/ . This is my homepage, as I am one of those "crazy Americans with a gun", and I hate to see this guy's search for answers buried in yet another guns/no guns debate with offtopic discussion... Guns are not an option for him in London, so there doesn't need to be so much discussion on the right to bear arms here. But, if anyone is interested in taking it to another forum, try that one out, or if you want to actually have a one on one discussion on the matter, PM or email me. But come on kids, let's not drown out any valid responses to this guy's plea for help!
Only if you're peforming some duty where your life is likely to be threatened can you carry concealed in most of these states... The possibility that criminals have any interest in unarmed civilians doing "low risk" things such as, say, living in one of those states... doesn't seem to cross any of the gun grabbers' minds...
You do NOT EVER shoot to kill. You shoot to live. Shoot to end the threat. If one shot to the chest kills him, you shot to live. If one shot goes wild and hits him in the arm and he drops his weapon (Whether that be a gun, a knife, or his fists) and retreats, then the threat is gone and you have no further business shooting. If three shots to the chest don't stop him and the threat is still there, keep shooting until there is no longer a threat. Shooting with the intention to kill is how you get in deep shit in court. In fact, one of the things a prosecuting lawyer (even in an obvious self defense shoot) will try to get you on is whether your ammunition was specifically designed to kill someone. Some of the best self defense ammunition such as "Hydra-shoks" and "Black Talon" will make the jury think that you meant to kill someone, whereas the more mundane "Gold Dot" is less scary, and less likely to be used against you even though all of them attempt to do the same thing: Expand to avoid overpenetration and harm to innocent people while transferring as much of the energy in the bullet to the target as possible.
You do not have to kill someone for a handgun to be effective. Any mugger, short of one who himself has a handgun, is going to stop short and find an easier victim if he sees that you have a handgun. Simply drawing and holding it at a low ready should do the trick. If not, up it comes ready to fire. If they continue at you, it would be reasonable to assume that they have intent to harm you, and then...
Sadly, London and its containing country have banned handguns completely. Of course, this doesn't mean that Joe Criminal can't have one, just that you can't have one.
I guess the idea would be to have some kind of knife or something that is a visible deterrent...
Criminals target people who strike them as easy victims. If you look confident and aware of your surroundings, you're less likely to be targetted. Keep your eyes open, constantly making observations about your environment.
Of course, if you can in fact secure a handgun with the proper training and certification in the great city of London (It is a city, and not a territory or something right?) that would be great. That's certainly how I choose to do things, but then, that's a right I've been guaranteed.:-)
I'd rather be stuck in my car (Let's think of the situations that could possibly jam windows, doors, etc and still leave the passengers in condition enough to get out consciously) than having my face dragged along the pavement because my car flipped over while my sunroof was open.
I support Microsoft. There is no suitable replacement for Windows. Linux is not it. Not yet. But maybe soon.
Windows has a monopoly because people choose to use their products. If you want to use Exchange, that's your choice. If not, switch to some other alternative.
Maybe this will allow things like Halo to not take so long flipping back and forth...
And maybe I'll get my coveted cooperative play out of some future version of Halo.
Mmmm.
As far as firearms go... Counter-Strike, Rogue Spear, and games such as that can get you acquainted with the very basic nomenclature regarding firearms, but not so much with their usage.
Something as simple as operating a semi-automatic handgun isn't really transferred from video games.
3 people who have shot mine had never fired a handgun, but they had all played quite a bit of CS and one had played every Rainbow Six game in existance. They didn't quite grasp how to load the magazine (2 of them put the bullets in backwards), how to insert it (Again, 2 of them tried to put the magzine in backwards, forcing it), how to operate the slide (Yes, it's as simple as pulling it back and letting go, but they were expecting it to be easier to pull back), how to release the slide when it's locked back when the gun is empty (Like the Glock in CS), what kind of sight picture to use, and how to hold it. As far as rifles go, the idea of a trajectory is foreign to a lot of people who have played games because few of the mainstream games account for that sort of thing. Nor do they teach you about cheek weld and preventing your eyebrow from getting bloody after you were too close to the scope.
At most, games teach you some of the names and terminologies (It's not a clip, it's a box magazine), but tend to add some hollywood in there where it shouldn't be and exaggerate the differences in calibers and the damage they do.
If you're thinking about getting a handgun, email me. I've got some tips and suggestions. Overkill_TASF_82 at yahoo.com.
Shoot safe and shoot often.
A handgun can be your own little piece of homeland security.
Any state/country that outlaws the concealed carry of a firearm is at least on its way to being half-tarded in my book. That's why I'll never live in California, Maryland, New York, or Jersey.
Yes, my post was a troll. And a news article that takes a CEO and tries to make him out as some paranoid bad guy with a gun isn't...
Californication is the way of the media!
Why is this such a big deal? Plenty of Americans (Myself included) carry a firearm on a regular basis. Few will tell you its because they feel that some specific group is likely to attack them. It's like an airbag. You never know when you might need it, and you hope you never do, but you'd much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I'd like to see the quote that led the author of the article to believe he specifically carries a gun because he's afraid that some stretched out script kiddie is going to try to be a hero to his pseudo-society and take out the CEO of the new evil empire. So he carries a gun. Big deal. A lot of people do. How is this newsworthy? Oh yeah... because according to Hollywood, only cops and bad guys carry guns... and he's not a cop, so... He MUST be a bad guy!
It's not just for Kazaa. It's a VPN that any and all of your Internet software can use. Use it at work to get around nazis who block listening to Di.fm, use it at school to get around port blocking and throttling....
My interest in it was actually getting unfirewalled, as that cripples Internet performance. But my school blocks the protocols necessary for outbound VPN connections, so I only had it for a month.
It's nice because you don't need their proprietary software. You just download a VPN connection file and voila, there's your tunnel.
All this talk about the cities being at fault for not designing a system that wasn't so easily "hacked"... You know what? That's not the problem. The problem is all the fucktards running around who have no regard for anyone else. The government gets to try to keep the rest of us happy due to a few idiots' actions, and it costs US money. I'm sick and tired of my tax dollars going toward the next mundane project because some script kiddies got together in daddy's garage and dedicated 2 days of their lives to perfecting a work around to the city traffic system. How the hell can you blame the cities? It's not exactly cheap to make something impenatrable to every kind of attack. There's definitely a steep curve to that, in fact. The PROBLEM is the people that buy the things, the people that manufacture the things, and every one of you 12 year old "M$ suX! Linux is t3h be57! D0wn w17h 7He gR33dY C0rP0ra7ion5!!!" fucktards who are so obsessed with the idea of anarchy and having a right to break anything that is breakable. Get a life. Grow up. And don't mess with my damn stoplights. I'm sick of paying for workarounds for your pointless and inconsiderate tampering. Get a job.
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I'm going to say this simply, hoping that you actually read it. You are shooting to save your skin. You are shooting to neutralize the threat. Your end goal is to neutralize that threat. If that just so happens to require killing them, or you end up killing them in the process, so be it. But if you pull that gun out with the intention to KILL, and not to stop the attack, you will be a murderer in the jury's view. It's not something I'm making up, and it's a very subtle difference. I am not saying you shouldn't kill someone in self defense. I'm saying that should not be your ultimate goal. And EVERY court in this country will agree with me.
Yeah, I covered that extensively in another post... thought I had at least mentioned it there. Black Talons are still JHP's, they just look and sound scarier. Kind of the EBR and other assault rifles phenomenon. :-)
http://www.allsafedefense.com/images/Bullets/Talon s&XT.jpg
Sure, we could snowball this.... Mmmm... snowball... You into that? :-)
It depends on the jury. A lot of lawyers would be able to put a spin on it that you had such a lethal weapon in your house and could have just as easily used pepper spray or something not lethal. I'm not of that school of thought, really... but.. personally, it probably wouldn't bother me unless: A: There was evidence that he was shot while retreating (And of course, didn't have a weapon at the time) B: There was evidence that he was shot while incapacitated C: There was clearly no threat on your life or that of your loved ones Not to say that any of those things we have me screaming "GUILTY!", but... if I knew you had shot him in the back, shot him while he was on the ground, or shot some guy who simply refused to lay down and clearly didn't have a weapon.... You'd probably be in some trouble... For the most part, the tone of your post leads me to believe you haven't given much thought to how seriously sick you will feel having killed someone, even a threat on your life... You're glorifying it just a little too much for my comfort. Again... things like this: "if I dont know you, you will be dead if you do not INSTANTLY obey my command to lie down on the floor facing away from me with your hands behind your head. i WILL empty a round at your chest if you even hesitate for 1 second." disappoint me a little, as I can't always justify this kind of indiscriminant "If you don't do A, I will ALWAYS DO B!!". Normally I could cut through it, but your sounding quite extreme (and not in a good way). However, I do like the fact that you turn the house lighting on (Intruder can run away, thereby allowing the situation to fix itself, and you can positively identify whoever it is, to make sure it's not your father (or son, if I'm wrong) getting a midnight snack).
Or, I can hope for laws that would punish him severely if he ever illegally obtained a firearm or killed someone out of cold blood, and that that place will allow me the right to protect myself, acknowledging that the police can not be there 24/7, but I can.
Self defense ammo (At least from the older crowd's perspective) has two basic purposes... But first... Normal, cheap, target ammunition for shooting at the range is typically "full metal jacket". This is typically a solid core of lead with a copper jacket bonded to it. I'll refer to this as FMJ. The more expensive, "self defense" ammunition is called "jacketed hollowpoint" (Though there are variations). Typically this looks just like a FMJ bullet except they're essentially hollowed out on the front, and the front isn't jacketed with copper, but is instead just exposed lead. I'll refer to this as JHP. FMJ ammunition is almost exclusively used at the shooting range, mainly because it is cheap. It goes boom, a bullet flies out, and it puts a hole in paper. That's really all anyone expects FMJ ammo to do. However, one thing you will notice if you ever try to dig up a bullet from the ground is that it travels quite a distance through the dirt. Even a low power (compared to, say, a .308win rifle) round such as a .40s&w handgun round will go 3 or 4 feet through dirt. When you dig it up, you'll find that the bullet has not deformed much at all, and is almost pristine. This is penetration. Penetration in self defense ammo is almost always a bad thing. If I shoot a BG (Bad guy) and the bullet goes through him, through three walls, and strikes an innocent someone, I'm in deep shit. That's the biggest concern with penetration. Next to that, and the physics geeks here can probably fill in the details... When a bullet passes all the way through something and keeps going, that means that not all of the energy the bullet was carrying was transferred to what was being shot at. Penetration is mostly where JHP comes in... http://www.ammolab.com/45GAP%20Test%20photo.jpg Notice bullet #19 in that picture. That's basically what an unfired JHP (Speer's Gold Dot line) looks like. The idea here is that when the bullet strikes a surface, it peels the bullet open. The impact starts the bullet flattening, and then the copper jacket gets pulled back, pulling the lad with it, mushrooming into, ideally, as flat of a chunk of lead as possible. This does a few things: It keeps the bullet from passing all the way through what's being shot at (Or the wall in case you miss) and it also transfers more of the bullet's energy to whatever it is hitting. Now, this energy transfer isn't actually what "stops" someone. It's not like it counteracts their forward momentum, because however much it pushes them around, your gun would have to recoil even more than that... But "stopping power" is actually its ability to cause sufficient trauma to stop an attacker. There are a few different kinds of trauma, the most basic of which are the "wound channel", which is the actual hole the bullet makes, and basically a fluid shockwave that disrupts the tissues around the wound channel. I'm not going to get into those gory details, but you can imagine how a flattened bullet slapping your insides at 1200 feet per second is going to do a little more damage than a much tinier bullet zipping right through. When a JHP round fully flattens and then exits, you get a very prominent "exit wound", but we don't want that bullet going any farther than it has to.
Now, back to that picture I linked to.... This is a website that does tests on various ammunitions, by firing them into "ballistic gelatin", a substance that is supposed to approximate the viscosity and whatnot of a body. I assume it's cheaper than going out and buying beef brisket to shoot up. :-) All of the rounds there are fired rounds, but at the bottom, you might notice that bullet 19 is... well... not flat. The reason for this is that sometimes, things can clog a JHP bullet. If a JHP clogs with denim (As it did in that photo) then the JHP is much less likely to expand, because it doesn't have that exposed inner core. For the curious, where it says "200gr", that is the weight of the bullet. 1 grain is 0.00228571429 ounces. Grains are used for measuring the weight of
Again... No, you are NOT using it to kill. You are NOT making a conscious effort NOT to kill, however. If that's what it takes, so be it, but you are NOT shooting to kill. The reason multiple shots are looked down upon in Texas (And everywhere else) is that in court, if you put 8 rounds into someone, you are going to appear to the jury that you most certainly meant to kill them. If you tell the jury "Yeah, I meant to kill him" you are going to be found guilty of murder or somesuch. I did NOT say to shoot to wound. HOWEVER, if you shoot an assailant, it hits him in his pelvis, shatters it, and he falls to the ground, he's no longer a threat, and you can NOT (legally) continue to shoot him. Shooting to NEUTRALIZE THE THREAT is almost always going to be a fatal shot, because in QUICKLY incapacitating an assailant, you are in effect neutralizing them. My point is that your OVERALL GOAL is not to kill anone, it is to neutralize what you believe to be a reasonable threat on your life. Again, tell ANY jury, lawyer, judge, or police officer that you were "shooting to kill", and you will go to jail, and your CCW will be revoked. I myself practice failure drills when I'm at the range. Two to the chest, and if the head is still where it was initially, one to the head. I know that if seeing the gun doesn't stop them, having it pointed at them doesn't stop them, having a round impact your chest doesn't stop them, having two rounds in their chest doesn't stop them, then I am going to have to resort to undoubtedly lethal force. It is a last resort when everything else has failed. I am not being lax about guns. I am reiterating what your intentions SHOULD be, in order to keep you from doing something stupid (kill someone who is no longer a threat) or from being charged and convicted of murder because you decided to tell everyone that your intentions were to kill someone. If your CCL instructor ever said "quick kill", "shoot to kill", or something similar, and anyone in charge of anything heard him, you can bet your ass he'd be fired, even in my favorite state of Texas. Shooting to wound or maim is most certainly dangerous. But shooting specifically to kill is illegal, and to many people immortal. You shoot to stop the threat. All I am saying is that as soon as there is no more threat, YOU STOP SHOOTING. And so do I. If you shoot your bad guy twice in the chest and he's on the ground, and then you go shoot him in the heart to make sure he's dead, any jury will say that you just murdered a man in cold blood. Shoot to live. If that requires killing someone, so be it, but if you shoot to KILL, you have the wrong frame of mind to be carrying a firearm. (Again, after having had one of these guys call me a left-wing gun grabber or some such, let me reiterate that I do have a CCW, I open carry an XD40, and I've fairly closely followed Virginia law and pertinent self defense cases all over the U.S. I'm not trying to grab anyone's guns. And I vote Bush, despite him saying he wouldn't veto the AWB if it made it to him.)
Yeah, in fact I carry the Gold Dots in .40s&w because of that mundane name and that's what my hometown police department use. Yet another interesting tidbit... A police officer I know in Tennesee (Or however it is spelled), responding to my ribbing that police officers are typically not very knowledgeable or handy with their side arms (I had the pleasure of watching my local P.D. "qualify"... it was sad) told me that they are only required to go to the range once every 6 months. This is supposedly because if they do shoot someone in the line of duty, the prosecuting lawyer can't claim that the police officers are "killing machines". After seeing their performance at my local range, they're more like "hollywood bad guys" than "killing machines", and that's just not right! Recently, the Virginia State Police announced that they were replacing their "worn out" sidearms here: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0504/149133.html
The interesting thing here is that they are replacing them after seven years, and, get this, 5,000 rounds. For those who don't know, 5,000 rounds is nothing. I think I hit the 4,500 mark today and I've only had mine since December. Police officers don't train very often or consume much ammunition considering the Jedi-like abilities some law makers would have you believe they have... and if it's all just because they don't want to look like "killing machines" if they have to defend themselves in court... again... wow... sad...
Did you even read my post before you responded? The point of carrying a gun is two fold. Both to defend yourself, and to prevent anyone from putting you in a situation where you'd need to defend yourself. That guy jumping you in the alley, in my book, may 95% of the time deserve to die, but LEGALLY (and morally in most peoples' books) as soon as he is no longer mugging you, he's no longer breaking any laws. If you shoot him in the back, shoot him while he's on the ground (and with no means of attacking you) then you are not defending yourself, and you will be charged with murder or somesuch. And... I'm a liberal leftist tool?!!! Look at my post history! I'm ALMOST as far right as can be. I own a handgun, a permit to carry it concealed (even though I carry openly), vote Bush, drink Beer, and wear boxers. However, I am apparently a little left of you, because your decision to suddenly jump all over me and suggest that my handgun, in self defense, should be used to completely obliterate and kill EVERY criminal who crosses my path regardless of whether they are a continuing threat or not... that bothers me somewhat. People like you are the ones who give owners and carriers of handguns a bad rap. Spend some time around some responsible gun carriers instead of the Counter-Strike crowd that you play with, and you'll realize that "shooting to kill" will not only get you convicted of murder, but is also overstepping your right to self defense. ALWAYS shoot to neutralize the threat if you even have to shoot to do so. If, as in the scenario you describe, you wound him and he's still holding a gun, you absolutely shoot until he has stopped moving, is fleeing (and not shooting) or has dropped the gun. However, if you MISS and he turns and runs off or stops his approach and surrenders, even in my twisted book you shouldn't shoot him anymore. Please, gun grabbers, ignore this overzealous 16 year old who wants nothing more than to own a Glock and bust a cap in someone!!
Anyone ignoring the law but expecting to receive protection from it is abusing the system, and as such, deserves no protection. Well, maybe not NO protection, but certainly not as much as Joe Workingman.
Since so many people (myself included) are interested in the suggestion that this fella should carry a gun, I direct you to a more relevant forum: http://www.hs2000talk.com/ . This is my homepage, as I am one of those "crazy Americans with a gun", and I hate to see this guy's search for answers buried in yet another guns/no guns debate with offtopic discussion... Guns are not an option for him in London, so there doesn't need to be so much discussion on the right to bear arms here. But, if anyone is interested in taking it to another forum, try that one out, or if you want to actually have a one on one discussion on the matter, PM or email me. But come on kids, let's not drown out any valid responses to this guy's plea for help!
Only if you're peforming some duty where your life is likely to be threatened can you carry concealed in most of these states... The possibility that criminals have any interest in unarmed civilians doing "low risk" things such as, say, living in one of those states... doesn't seem to cross any of the gun grabbers' minds...
You do NOT EVER shoot to kill. You shoot to live. Shoot to end the threat. If one shot to the chest kills him, you shot to live. If one shot goes wild and hits him in the arm and he drops his weapon (Whether that be a gun, a knife, or his fists) and retreats, then the threat is gone and you have no further business shooting. If three shots to the chest don't stop him and the threat is still there, keep shooting until there is no longer a threat. Shooting with the intention to kill is how you get in deep shit in court. In fact, one of the things a prosecuting lawyer (even in an obvious self defense shoot) will try to get you on is whether your ammunition was specifically designed to kill someone. Some of the best self defense ammunition such as "Hydra-shoks" and "Black Talon" will make the jury think that you meant to kill someone, whereas the more mundane "Gold Dot" is less scary, and less likely to be used against you even though all of them attempt to do the same thing: Expand to avoid overpenetration and harm to innocent people while transferring as much of the energy in the bullet to the target as possible.
You do not have to kill someone for a handgun to be effective. Any mugger, short of one who himself has a handgun, is going to stop short and find an easier victim if he sees that you have a handgun. Simply drawing and holding it at a low ready should do the trick. If not, up it comes ready to fire. If they continue at you, it would be reasonable to assume that they have intent to harm you, and then...
Sadly, London and its containing country have banned handguns completely. Of course, this doesn't mean that Joe Criminal can't have one, just that you can't have one. I guess the idea would be to have some kind of knife or something that is a visible deterrent... Criminals target people who strike them as easy victims. If you look confident and aware of your surroundings, you're less likely to be targetted. Keep your eyes open, constantly making observations about your environment. Of course, if you can in fact secure a handgun with the proper training and certification in the great city of London (It is a city, and not a territory or something right?) that would be great. That's certainly how I choose to do things, but then, that's a right I've been guaranteed. :-)
I'd rather be stuck in my car (Let's think of the situations that could possibly jam windows, doors, etc and still leave the passengers in condition enough to get out consciously) than having my face dragged along the pavement because my car flipped over while my sunroof was open.
I support Microsoft. There is no suitable replacement for Windows. Linux is not it. Not yet. But maybe soon. Windows has a monopoly because people choose to use their products. If you want to use Exchange, that's your choice. If not, switch to some other alternative.
Maybe this will allow things like Halo to not take so long flipping back and forth... And maybe I'll get my coveted cooperative play out of some future version of Halo. Mmmm.
As far as firearms go... Counter-Strike, Rogue Spear, and games such as that can get you acquainted with the very basic nomenclature regarding firearms, but not so much with their usage. Something as simple as operating a semi-automatic handgun isn't really transferred from video games. 3 people who have shot mine had never fired a handgun, but they had all played quite a bit of CS and one had played every Rainbow Six game in existance. They didn't quite grasp how to load the magazine (2 of them put the bullets in backwards), how to insert it (Again, 2 of them tried to put the magzine in backwards, forcing it), how to operate the slide (Yes, it's as simple as pulling it back and letting go, but they were expecting it to be easier to pull back), how to release the slide when it's locked back when the gun is empty (Like the Glock in CS), what kind of sight picture to use, and how to hold it. As far as rifles go, the idea of a trajectory is foreign to a lot of people who have played games because few of the mainstream games account for that sort of thing. Nor do they teach you about cheek weld and preventing your eyebrow from getting bloody after you were too close to the scope. At most, games teach you some of the names and terminologies (It's not a clip, it's a box magazine), but tend to add some hollywood in there where it shouldn't be and exaggerate the differences in calibers and the damage they do. If you're thinking about getting a handgun, email me. I've got some tips and suggestions. Overkill_TASF_82 at yahoo.com. Shoot safe and shoot often. A handgun can be your own little piece of homeland security.
Any state/country that outlaws the concealed carry of a firearm is at least on its way to being half-tarded in my book. That's why I'll never live in California, Maryland, New York, or Jersey.
Yes, my post was a troll. And a news article that takes a CEO and tries to make him out as some paranoid bad guy with a gun isn't... Californication is the way of the media!
Why is this such a big deal? Plenty of Americans (Myself included) carry a firearm on a regular basis. Few will tell you its because they feel that some specific group is likely to attack them. It's like an airbag. You never know when you might need it, and you hope you never do, but you'd much rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I'd like to see the quote that led the author of the article to believe he specifically carries a gun because he's afraid that some stretched out script kiddie is going to try to be a hero to his pseudo-society and take out the CEO of the new evil empire. So he carries a gun. Big deal. A lot of people do. How is this newsworthy? Oh yeah... because according to Hollywood, only cops and bad guys carry guns... and he's not a cop, so... He MUST be a bad guy!
It's not just for Kazaa. It's a VPN that any and all of your Internet software can use. Use it at work to get around nazis who block listening to Di.fm, use it at school to get around port blocking and throttling....
My interest in it was actually getting unfirewalled, as that cripples Internet performance. But my school blocks the protocols necessary for outbound VPN connections, so I only had it for a month.
It's nice because you don't need their proprietary software. You just download a VPN connection file and voila, there's your tunnel.
I don't use GameSpy or anything affiliated with them where possible. GaySpy sucks. FilePlanet is crap... Long live http://GamePhilez.us!
All this talk about the cities being at fault for not designing a system that wasn't so easily "hacked"... You know what? That's not the problem. The problem is all the fucktards running around who have no regard for anyone else. The government gets to try to keep the rest of us happy due to a few idiots' actions, and it costs US money. I'm sick and tired of my tax dollars going toward the next mundane project because some script kiddies got together in daddy's garage and dedicated 2 days of their lives to perfecting a work around to the city traffic system. How the hell can you blame the cities? It's not exactly cheap to make something impenatrable to every kind of attack. There's definitely a steep curve to that, in fact. The PROBLEM is the people that buy the things, the people that manufacture the things, and every one of you 12 year old "M$ suX! Linux is t3h be57! D0wn w17h 7He gR33dY C0rP0ra7ion5!!!" fucktards who are so obsessed with the idea of anarchy and having a right to break anything that is breakable. Get a life. Grow up. And don't mess with my damn stoplights. I'm sick of paying for workarounds for your pointless and inconsiderate tampering. Get a job.