No, it doesn't prevent you from getting hurt. I'd be leery of saying that being hit while wearing body armor is going to slow you down though. Some people have been hit by handgun rounds without body armor and failed to notice until after the shooting incident had concluded. Other people get hit by a.22 in the foot and collapse to the ground screaming in pain. You just can't predict how someone is going to react to being shot when the adrenaline is pumping.
Ever read about the FBI shootout in Miami? The suspects in that case kept fighting for almost four minutes despite multiple gunshot wounds. There's also a case of a officer shooting in South Carolina. Traffic stop gone bad. The officer hit the suspect five times center of mass with a.357 magnum. The suspect shot him with a.22 handgun, caught the officer in the armpit under his vest and ultimately killed him. The suspect survived, in spite of being hit five times CoM with the most effective man-stopper (for handguns anyway) out there.
None of that is to say that the police wouldn't have prevailed if the suspect in the Binghamton shooting was still going when they arrived. I suspect that even patrolman (never mind the SWAT team) would have taken him out. But I don't think it would have been as cut and dry as the armchair generals think.
He certainly would have been knocked off his feet if a couple shots were fired in quick succession.
I think that's a dangerous assumption to make. If the energy in a bullet was enough to knock you off your feet then it would also be enough to knock the shooter off his feet. Humans go down after being shot because the central nervous system was destroyed (headshot), because they've lost too much blood to remain standing (damage to the cardiovascular system) or because of shock. Shock can't really be predicted as evidenced by the examples above.
You can dismiss every single point that I made with 'apples to oranges' but you still can't provide any meaningful argument that shooting down a hijacked plane on a suicide mission would be worse than allowing it to complete it's mission?
In Manhattan, this would result in a massive number of deaths.
Again, that would depend on where it hit. I don't know if you've ever been to NYC but there is more to Manhattan than Times Square.
How about an area as densely populated as Queens? Hmm, five people on the ground died. Queens has a population density of 20,409/sq mile. Manhattan is 70,595/sq mi or 3.5 times more. So maybe 18 people would have died instead?
Mind you, those are off the envelope calculations and in reality it could be much worse (the plane goes down on top of Madison Square Garden during a performance) at one of the scale to zero loss of life (plane goes down on an uninhabited portion of Central Park) at the other.
The point being that not shooting down a hijacked plane and allowing it to hit it's target is probably much worse than shooting it down and accepting collateral damage on the ground. If nothing else the plane is going to bleed off a fair amount of airspeed and hit the ground with much less kinetic energy than a powered aircraft being used as a missile. If it comes apart because of the damage that's even better -- smaller objects hitting the ground have less mass and hence less energy.
Keep laughing. Someone in London is recording you and will be along shortly to discuss how horrible your laugh is;)
And if you still think they're going to be any use against the Government your clutching to straws - unless by 'use' you mean 'aid to suicide by army'.
If things ever got that bad I'd rather die clutching my rifle then die pleading for my life like all of the unarmed masses that have been murdered by governments gone bad during the 20th century. Maybe I'll take one or two of the bastards out with me. If everyone had that attitude and the freedom to arm themselves I suspect that we wouldn't wind up using the 'G' word (genocide) nearly as often. Take a look at the Rwandan genocide sometime. It was largely carried out by militia's armed with rifles. Has it ever occurred to you that if the victims had rifles it would have turned out very differently?
Mind you, I find it extremely unlikely that things would ever get that bad in the United States. I do find it pretty telling that you've already given up any thought of even bothering to try and defend your life though. I guess your life isn't worth fighting for, eh?
Umm, have you ever fired a real weapon outside of Call of Duty? You think it's easy to get a headshot with a handgun when the person is shooting back at you? Keep in mind that your body is filled with adrenaline and your fine motor skills have vanished. Keep in mind that as a patrolman you are trained to shoot center of mass and have practiced shooting center of mass. During combat your body primarily falls back to muscle memory and training.
Strange things have been known to happen during gunfights. I listened to one law enforcement officer recount a shooting where he had to reload his gun. He pocketed the empty magazine because that's what he was used to doing at the range. In so doing he delayed his reload and nearly got himself killed. He didn't do it on purpose, it was just the reaction that his body had under the stress of the situation.
I'm sure they would have been able to subdue him and save lives but it wouldn't have been pretty. To casually suggest "headshot" as a solution suggests to me that you don't have any actual understanding of combat outside of video games.
I saw an interesting episode of Boston Legal the other day. Denny and Alan are having an argument and Denny had this great line: "In your life, growing up, you just took for granted that America would always be. Why not? It's a super power, the strongest country in the world. In my lifetime with Hitler trying to take over the world and having the means to do so, we went to bed scared at night that America would end. Imagine that feeling, Alan!"
No, the people of that generation would not have hid under a desk waiting to be murdered. They would have done something about it. I find it disgusting that a bunch of twenty-somethings cowered under their desks while an old man died trying to save them. I wonder if they even know shame or if we've forgotten what that is too?
I'm imagining this is what Rome was like in the final years, as the frontier crumbled and the barbarians road unmolested through Italy.
Then we are well and truly fucked, because the United States is actually the best off of the Western Powers and we are still wimps and wussies. Anybody recall the British sailors who got captured by the Iranians? Recall the one of them that went on TV crying about the ordeal? Your people survived the Blitz without breaking down and you as a trained member of the Royal Navy couldn't handle a few days of captivity by a neutral power that you weren't even at war with? WTF?
On the other hand there are still glimmers of hope. Flight 93 comes to mind. The Americans who took back their ship come to mind. I also recall an Italian guy that got captured by terrorists who executed him. His last words were "I'll show you how an Italian dies!" Got to respect that. I don't know if I'm ready to write the obituary for Western civilization just yet. Maybe we need to lose some of our wealth and creature comforts to remind us of the things that actually matter (freedom) and which are worth dying for.
Someone's far more likely to get shot and/or have the plane suffer depressurization if some (untrained) have-a-go hero uhm.. has a go.
How does a plane suffer a depressurization if I don't decide to surrender to some jackass wielding a box cutter? And how is a depressurization worse than the alternative of the plane reaching it's target anyway?
Except that F-16s have a pretty short operational range, so unless New Jersey has seceded from the Union and declared war on New York, or Al Qaeda has hijacked an aircraft carrier and stationed it off Long Island, they're probably ours.
Al Qaeda would be stupid enough to piss away a perfectly functional aircraft carrier by hijacking planes that can't fly off carriers;)
Yeah, these dirtbags always look for an area filled with victims who can't fight back. The guy here in Binghamton took his own life as soon as he heard the sirens. Fucking cowards.
I was pointing out that the *institution* of policing has done the public a disservice by telling them "We'll protect you, so you don't need to protect yourself".
I don't think it's the police that are saying that. Unless you live in a major city (New York or LA size) I've never heard the police department claim that "We'll protect you, so don't bother to protect yourself". Around these parts most of the self-defense classes that you can take (both armed and unarmed) are run by law enforcement officers. I've talked to many of them and they all say that they can't be everywhere at once and encourage members of the public to be able to take care of themselves.
The problem runs a lot deeper than defending yourself from scumbags too. How many people do you know that make the effort to keep a first aid kit in the car? Something as simple as a benadryl tablet could save your life but how many people bother to keep them on hand? How many people keep a flashlight handy? How many people bother to invest in a decent multi-tool or even a pocketknife? Both could get you out of a lot of jams but most people don't own one or if they do it's left in a drawer at home. These people can't even take care of themselves and are of absolutely no use to their neighbors if disaster strikes.
Then on the matter of protecting yourself from scumbags.... we've been conditioned to think that we can just call 911 and all will be well. Yeah, well good luck with that if you live in the parts of the country with a 30 minute response time. Hell, even a 5 minute response time isn't fast enough if someone is intent on doing you harm. Yet how many people have bothered to learn even basic self-defense skills? I'm not even talking about concealed carry -- simple situational awareness is enough to keep you out of danger 95% of the time. The simple act of carrying a flashlight could save your life if you meet a scumbag at night -- why do you think the police always shine the damn thing in your face when they pull you over at night? Pretty damn disorienting isn't it?
Yeah, it's annoying. I don't blame the police per say though. I blame their political masters and the general laziness of the American population. Most of the police that I know wish that people were better able to take care of themselves. It would save them a lot of headaches.
A man starts shooting in an immigrant center, and police take 45 minutes to enter the building, while people hide like scared rabbits waiting to be rescued. The police state that their response time was irrelevant - the victims would have died anyway.
With all due respect, I live in this town and the media hasn't reported that story fairly or accurately. Are you familiar with the fog of war? Nobody knows what's going on. All the police knew at the time is that they've arrived on scene and no shots are being fired. They have contact with the receptionist up front (the true heroine that day) and some people hiding in the basement. None of the people they had contact with could see the shooter -- all they knew was that the shots had ceased.
The working assumption at first was that they were dealing with a hostage situation. You may recall that this is what the media reported. Now if you think you are dealing with a hostage situation are you going to go charging in and risk further loss of life or are you going to try and establish contact with the hostage-taker while getting the rest of your units in place and ready to go in? Within ten minutes they had the shooters information and were attempting to contact him. When they eventually found his cell phone (abandoned in his vehicle as I recall) it had a series of missed calls from the police on it.
When they couldn't establish contact they decided to go into the building. They deployed the SWAT team and a robot from the bomb squad. Clearing the building took another 30-45 minutes, during which time the victims were being taken out. The folks in the basement were advised to barricade the door and remain in contact. As their cell phone batteries died they switched off and called from another phone. Further complicating this was the language barrier -- the building in question was an immigrant center and many of the victims didn't speak English.
Every local police officer I've spoken with says that they are trained for active shooter scenarios. If shots were still being fired when they arrived they would have gone in. It would have been messy (the suspect had body armor and patrolmen don't have the weapons or training to deal with that) but they would have gone in nonetheless. Since they didn't hear shots they proceeded with caution rather than risk running up the body count further. Does this really seem unreasonable to you?
Oh yes, we have reached the point where helplessness is considered noble
You'll brook no argument from me on this point. "Just wait for the police, don't try to do anything yourself, you might get hurt" The arguments against gun-ownership are particularly insulting in this regard. I just wanted to correct you on the Binghamton shooting. As I said, I live in this area and I feel that our police agencies handled the matter as well as could be expected with the information that they had at the time. Will they learn a few lessons from this and refine their procedures? Probably. Do they deserve our scorn for how they responded to this incident? No, IMHO, they don't.
Planes have gone down in populated neighborhoods before without massive loss of life. Certainly nothing on the scale of the twin towers coming down, which is what you'd be trying to prevent by shooting the thing down to begin with....
Actually, they can make you turn over an encryption key [slashdot.org].
Ah, I just knew that someone would cite that case to try and disprove my argument. Two problems with that though.
1) That case hasn't worked it's way through the appeals process yet.
2) That moron screwed himself when he initially cooperated with law enforcement. Any dipshit with half a brain would have asked for a lawyer. "Oh, you want to see my laptop with the incriminating evidence on it? Sure, here it is" If he had remained silence and invoked his rights from the outset we wouldn't be having this discussion. The story that you linked to seems to make this point. Rights aren't any good if you don't use them. I have zero sympathy for him.
They can also detain you without charges [wikipedia.org], especially if they deem you an enemy combatant.
Strange enough, he got his day in court and was found guilty by a jury of his peers......
That's because, quite simply, British people do not consider owning firearms a right any more than we don't consider it a right to own nerve gas. And no, there is no qualitative difference between these examples, it really is just a question of scale.
Actually, yes, there is. I can defend myself using a firearm with minimal risk to my neighbors. I don't think you can make the same claim for nerve gas.
What confuses me is the fact that the 'right' to bear arms is actually enshrined in the constitution.
Because the framers suspected that eventually some jackass politician would come along and try to disarm the population for their "protection"? Because the people of the time had just fought and won a war of independence using their own firearms?
The right has no pragmatic value, and it certainly isn't morally self-evident like the 'right to clean water'. It is entirely arbitrary
Not a direct rebuttal to the parent post, I'm just sick of "sportsman" being synonymous to "gunowner".
Fair enough. I know my share of gunowners that aren't very happy with the current situation. It's aggravating to plan to spend a day plinking with your various firearms only to wind up taking just the.22 because that's the only thing you could find ammo for. Handgun ammo is particularly hard to find right now.
I think Americans place far too much importance on whether a private citizen can own a firearm or not. I'm not taking a stand on this issue one way or the other as to whether it's right, but if you got anywhere near to the critical mass it would take to forcibly reform our democracy (100k people storming Parliament), there would be a few deaths with or without a bunch of handguns. The 100k people would win by sheer number, with or without firearms.
Yeah, you can get reform without firearms, if the Government you are attempting to reform respects human rights. India achieved independence largely without firearms. But what happens if the Government doesn't respect human rights? What if they start dropping napalm on your march to Parliament? Ever seen Hotel Rwanda? If you were a Tutsi, would you rather have had a AK-47 or Gandhi by your side?
Regardless of your thoughts on the effectiveness or lack thereof of firearms, shouldn't we be asking ourselves why the Government wants to take away a right we've had for hundreds of years? If we surrender this right then what will we say when some politician comes along that wants to take away another one? Once you set the precedent that the population is willing to surrender one right, what makes you think that will be the only one that you are asked to surrender?
I'm skeptical of the militia types that are waiting for the revolution. I do believe in the right of a population to revolt and change it's Government but only after "all other means of redress are ineffectual" (to quote the New Hampshire Bill of Rights). It seems to me that the militia types have forgotten this little nugget and in any case I find the thought of a revolution to be pretty amusing when the vast majority of Americans are fat and happy.
The militia types don't really scare me though. They aren't harming me or anyone else. The people who scare the hell out of me are the types that think the 2nd amendment is 'obsolete' while using arguments like "Jefferson never had to deal with repeating firearms". Why do they want to render the population powerless and at the mercy of the Government for protection? Governments change, sometimes pretty rapidly. Even if yours is a benevolent one, it can't protect you all the time. It's just not possible. One of my favorite quotes is, "911: When seconds count, help is only minutes away"
No, there's no reason that I can see to disarm the population. I've yet to hear an argument from the gun control crowd that isn't based on FUD.
They will be worthless until the revolution comes. And even during a revolution you'll be relying on the military fragmenting (both to weaken the state and to arm your side). That will be far more important than your personal small arms. To put it bluntly, if the military doesn't fragment it won't be much of a revolution. (And you'll need to pray NATO/UN allies... etc, etc doesn't send additional forces to bolster the state side.)
Who said the guns were for the revolution? My point was that we still have a right that our British friends don't.
That depends on the issue, doesn't it? The last eight years seemed pretty sane for gun rights -- Clinton's gun ban expired, Heller was rightfully decided, DoJ issued memos saying that the 2nd amendment protects individual rights, retired law enforcement officers can now carry in any jurisdiction, etc, etc, etc.
That would end if people didn't believe that Obama and the Democratic leadership were itching to infringe on their 2nd amendment rights. Most sportsman are extremely annoyed by the run on ammo and firearms because it's driving up prices for everybody -- but it isn't going to end until some sanity comes out of Washington.
A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
How do you control information without bullets? "Hmm, I see you have some information there.... [cocks gun]";) Even in the movie the bad guys used guns....
Well, I am not going to feel safe until *everyone* is in jail.
I agree. Let's start with every member of the British Parliament and American Congress. I could even make a think of the children argument to justify it.
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No, it doesn't prevent you from getting hurt. I'd be leery of saying that being hit while wearing body armor is going to slow you down though. Some people have been hit by handgun rounds without body armor and failed to notice until after the shooting incident had concluded. Other people get hit by a .22 in the foot and collapse to the ground screaming in pain. You just can't predict how someone is going to react to being shot when the adrenaline is pumping.
Ever read about the FBI shootout in Miami? The suspects in that case kept fighting for almost four minutes despite multiple gunshot wounds. There's also a case of a officer shooting in South Carolina. Traffic stop gone bad. The officer hit the suspect five times center of mass with a .357 magnum. The suspect shot him with a .22 handgun, caught the officer in the armpit under his vest and ultimately killed him. The suspect survived, in spite of being hit five times CoM with the most effective man-stopper (for handguns anyway) out there.
None of that is to say that the police wouldn't have prevailed if the suspect in the Binghamton shooting was still going when they arrived. I suspect that even patrolman (never mind the SWAT team) would have taken him out. But I don't think it would have been as cut and dry as the armchair generals think.
He certainly would have been knocked off his feet if a couple shots were fired in quick succession.
I think that's a dangerous assumption to make. If the energy in a bullet was enough to knock you off your feet then it would also be enough to knock the shooter off his feet. Humans go down after being shot because the central nervous system was destroyed (headshot), because they've lost too much blood to remain standing (damage to the cardiovascular system) or because of shock. Shock can't really be predicted as evidenced by the examples above.
You can dismiss every single point that I made with 'apples to oranges' but you still can't provide any meaningful argument that shooting down a hijacked plane on a suicide mission would be worse than allowing it to complete it's mission?
In Manhattan, this would result in a massive number of deaths.
Again, that would depend on where it hit. I don't know if you've ever been to NYC but there is more to Manhattan than Times Square.
How about an area as densely populated as Queens? Hmm, five people on the ground died. Queens has a population density of 20,409/sq mile. Manhattan is 70,595/sq mi or 3.5 times more. So maybe 18 people would have died instead?
Mind you, those are off the envelope calculations and in reality it could be much worse (the plane goes down on top of Madison Square Garden during a performance) at one of the scale to zero loss of life (plane goes down on an uninhabited portion of Central Park) at the other.
The point being that not shooting down a hijacked plane and allowing it to hit it's target is probably much worse than shooting it down and accepting collateral damage on the ground. If nothing else the plane is going to bleed off a fair amount of airspeed and hit the ground with much less kinetic energy than a powered aircraft being used as a missile. If it comes apart because of the damage that's even better -- smaller objects hitting the ground have less mass and hence less energy.
Keep laughing. Someone in London is recording you and will be along shortly to discuss how horrible your laugh is ;)
And if you still think they're going to be any use against the Government your clutching to straws - unless by 'use' you mean 'aid to suicide by army'.
If things ever got that bad I'd rather die clutching my rifle then die pleading for my life like all of the unarmed masses that have been murdered by governments gone bad during the 20th century. Maybe I'll take one or two of the bastards out with me. If everyone had that attitude and the freedom to arm themselves I suspect that we wouldn't wind up using the 'G' word (genocide) nearly as often. Take a look at the Rwandan genocide sometime. It was largely carried out by militia's armed with rifles. Has it ever occurred to you that if the victims had rifles it would have turned out very differently?
Mind you, I find it extremely unlikely that things would ever get that bad in the United States. I do find it pretty telling that you've already given up any thought of even bothering to try and defend your life though. I guess your life isn't worth fighting for, eh?
Hmm, where have we heard that before?
Umm, have you ever fired a real weapon outside of Call of Duty? You think it's easy to get a headshot with a handgun when the person is shooting back at you? Keep in mind that your body is filled with adrenaline and your fine motor skills have vanished. Keep in mind that as a patrolman you are trained to shoot center of mass and have practiced shooting center of mass. During combat your body primarily falls back to muscle memory and training.
Strange things have been known to happen during gunfights. I listened to one law enforcement officer recount a shooting where he had to reload his gun. He pocketed the empty magazine because that's what he was used to doing at the range. In so doing he delayed his reload and nearly got himself killed. He didn't do it on purpose, it was just the reaction that his body had under the stress of the situation.
I'm sure they would have been able to subdue him and save lives but it wouldn't have been pretty. To casually suggest "headshot" as a solution suggests to me that you don't have any actual understanding of combat outside of video games.
I saw an interesting episode of Boston Legal the other day. Denny and Alan are having an argument and Denny had this great line: "In your life, growing up, you just took for granted that America would always be. Why not? It's a super power, the strongest country in the world. In my lifetime with Hitler trying to take over the world and having the means to do so, we went to bed scared at night that America would end. Imagine that feeling, Alan!"
No, the people of that generation would not have hid under a desk waiting to be murdered. They would have done something about it. I find it disgusting that a bunch of twenty-somethings cowered under their desks while an old man died trying to save them. I wonder if they even know shame or if we've forgotten what that is too?
I'm imagining this is what Rome was like in the final years, as the frontier crumbled and the barbarians road unmolested through Italy.
Then we are well and truly fucked, because the United States is actually the best off of the Western Powers and we are still wimps and wussies. Anybody recall the British sailors who got captured by the Iranians? Recall the one of them that went on TV crying about the ordeal? Your people survived the Blitz without breaking down and you as a trained member of the Royal Navy couldn't handle a few days of captivity by a neutral power that you weren't even at war with? WTF?
On the other hand there are still glimmers of hope. Flight 93 comes to mind. The Americans who took back their ship come to mind. I also recall an Italian guy that got captured by terrorists who executed him. His last words were "I'll show you how an Italian dies!" Got to respect that. I don't know if I'm ready to write the obituary for Western civilization just yet. Maybe we need to lose some of our wealth and creature comforts to remind us of the things that actually matter (freedom) and which are worth dying for.
Looked an awful lot like what I would imagine to be an airbust nuclear explosion
You still had eyesight and your skin wasn't covered by third degree burns? Hint: It wasn't an airburst nuclear explosion.
Someone's far more likely to get shot and/or have the plane suffer depressurization if some (untrained) have-a-go hero uhm.. has a go.
How does a plane suffer a depressurization if I don't decide to surrender to some jackass wielding a box cutter? And how is a depressurization worse than the alternative of the plane reaching it's target anyway?
Except that F-16s have a pretty short operational range, so unless New Jersey has seceded from the Union and declared war on New York, or Al Qaeda has hijacked an aircraft carrier and stationed it off Long Island, they're probably ours.
Al Qaeda would be stupid enough to piss away a perfectly functional aircraft carrier by hijacking planes that can't fly off carriers ;)
Yeah, these dirtbags always look for an area filled with victims who can't fight back. The guy here in Binghamton took his own life as soon as he heard the sirens. Fucking cowards.
I was pointing out that the *institution* of policing has done the public a disservice by telling them "We'll protect you, so you don't need to protect yourself".
I don't think it's the police that are saying that. Unless you live in a major city (New York or LA size) I've never heard the police department claim that "We'll protect you, so don't bother to protect yourself". Around these parts most of the self-defense classes that you can take (both armed and unarmed) are run by law enforcement officers. I've talked to many of them and they all say that they can't be everywhere at once and encourage members of the public to be able to take care of themselves.
The problem runs a lot deeper than defending yourself from scumbags too. How many people do you know that make the effort to keep a first aid kit in the car? Something as simple as a benadryl tablet could save your life but how many people bother to keep them on hand? How many people keep a flashlight handy? How many people bother to invest in a decent multi-tool or even a pocketknife? Both could get you out of a lot of jams but most people don't own one or if they do it's left in a drawer at home. These people can't even take care of themselves and are of absolutely no use to their neighbors if disaster strikes.
Then on the matter of protecting yourself from scumbags.... we've been conditioned to think that we can just call 911 and all will be well. Yeah, well good luck with that if you live in the parts of the country with a 30 minute response time. Hell, even a 5 minute response time isn't fast enough if someone is intent on doing you harm. Yet how many people have bothered to learn even basic self-defense skills? I'm not even talking about concealed carry -- simple situational awareness is enough to keep you out of danger 95% of the time. The simple act of carrying a flashlight could save your life if you meet a scumbag at night -- why do you think the police always shine the damn thing in your face when they pull you over at night? Pretty damn disorienting isn't it?
Yeah, it's annoying. I don't blame the police per say though. I blame their political masters and the general laziness of the American population. Most of the police that I know wish that people were better able to take care of themselves. It would save them a lot of headaches.
A man starts shooting in an immigrant center, and police take 45 minutes to enter the building, while people hide like scared rabbits waiting to be rescued. The police state that their response time was irrelevant - the victims would have died anyway.
With all due respect, I live in this town and the media hasn't reported that story fairly or accurately. Are you familiar with the fog of war? Nobody knows what's going on. All the police knew at the time is that they've arrived on scene and no shots are being fired. They have contact with the receptionist up front (the true heroine that day) and some people hiding in the basement. None of the people they had contact with could see the shooter -- all they knew was that the shots had ceased.
The working assumption at first was that they were dealing with a hostage situation. You may recall that this is what the media reported. Now if you think you are dealing with a hostage situation are you going to go charging in and risk further loss of life or are you going to try and establish contact with the hostage-taker while getting the rest of your units in place and ready to go in? Within ten minutes they had the shooters information and were attempting to contact him. When they eventually found his cell phone (abandoned in his vehicle as I recall) it had a series of missed calls from the police on it.
When they couldn't establish contact they decided to go into the building. They deployed the SWAT team and a robot from the bomb squad. Clearing the building took another 30-45 minutes, during which time the victims were being taken out. The folks in the basement were advised to barricade the door and remain in contact. As their cell phone batteries died they switched off and called from another phone. Further complicating this was the language barrier -- the building in question was an immigrant center and many of the victims didn't speak English.
Every local police officer I've spoken with says that they are trained for active shooter scenarios. If shots were still being fired when they arrived they would have gone in. It would have been messy (the suspect had body armor and patrolmen don't have the weapons or training to deal with that) but they would have gone in nonetheless. Since they didn't hear shots they proceeded with caution rather than risk running up the body count further. Does this really seem unreasonable to you?
Oh yes, we have reached the point where helplessness is considered noble
You'll brook no argument from me on this point. "Just wait for the police, don't try to do anything yourself, you might get hurt" The arguments against gun-ownership are particularly insulting in this regard. I just wanted to correct you on the Binghamton shooting. As I said, I live in this area and I feel that our police agencies handled the matter as well as could be expected with the information that they had at the time. Will they learn a few lessons from this and refine their procedures? Probably. Do they deserve our scorn for how they responded to this incident? No, IMHO, they don't.
Planes have gone down in populated neighborhoods before without massive loss of life. Certainly nothing on the scale of the twin towers coming down, which is what you'd be trying to prevent by shooting the thing down to begin with....
Actually, they can make you turn over an encryption key [slashdot.org].
Ah, I just knew that someone would cite that case to try and disprove my argument. Two problems with that though.
1) That case hasn't worked it's way through the appeals process yet.
2) That moron screwed himself when he initially cooperated with law enforcement. Any dipshit with half a brain would have asked for a lawyer. "Oh, you want to see my laptop with the incriminating evidence on it? Sure, here it is" If he had remained silence and invoked his rights from the outset we wouldn't be having this discussion. The story that you linked to seems to make this point. Rights aren't any good if you don't use them. I have zero sympathy for him.
They can also detain you without charges [wikipedia.org], especially if they deem you an enemy combatant.
Strange enough, he got his day in court and was found guilty by a jury of his peers......
That's because, quite simply, British people do not consider owning firearms a right any more than we don't consider it a right to own nerve gas. And no, there is no qualitative difference between these examples, it really is just a question of scale.
Actually, yes, there is. I can defend myself using a firearm with minimal risk to my neighbors. I don't think you can make the same claim for nerve gas.
What confuses me is the fact that the 'right' to bear arms is actually enshrined in the constitution.
Because the framers suspected that eventually some jackass politician would come along and try to disarm the population for their "protection"? Because the people of the time had just fought and won a war of independence using their own firearms?
The right has no pragmatic value, and it certainly isn't morally self-evident like the 'right to clean water'. It is entirely arbitrary
Self-defense isn't a morally self-evident right?
Not a direct rebuttal to the parent post, I'm just sick of "sportsman" being synonymous to "gunowner".
Fair enough. I know my share of gunowners that aren't very happy with the current situation. It's aggravating to plan to spend a day plinking with your various firearms only to wind up taking just the .22 because that's the only thing you could find ammo for. Handgun ammo is particularly hard to find right now.
I think Americans place far too much importance on whether a private citizen can own a firearm or not. I'm not taking a stand on this issue one way or the other as to whether it's right, but if you got anywhere near to the critical mass it would take to forcibly reform our democracy (100k people storming Parliament), there would be a few deaths with or without a bunch of handguns. The 100k people would win by sheer number, with or without firearms.
Yeah, you can get reform without firearms, if the Government you are attempting to reform respects human rights. India achieved independence largely without firearms. But what happens if the Government doesn't respect human rights? What if they start dropping napalm on your march to Parliament? Ever seen Hotel Rwanda? If you were a Tutsi, would you rather have had a AK-47 or Gandhi by your side?
Regardless of your thoughts on the effectiveness or lack thereof of firearms, shouldn't we be asking ourselves why the Government wants to take away a right we've had for hundreds of years? If we surrender this right then what will we say when some politician comes along that wants to take away another one? Once you set the precedent that the population is willing to surrender one right, what makes you think that will be the only one that you are asked to surrender?
I'm skeptical of the militia types that are waiting for the revolution. I do believe in the right of a population to revolt and change it's Government but only after "all other means of redress are ineffectual" (to quote the New Hampshire Bill of Rights). It seems to me that the militia types have forgotten this little nugget and in any case I find the thought of a revolution to be pretty amusing when the vast majority of Americans are fat and happy.
The militia types don't really scare me though. They aren't harming me or anyone else. The people who scare the hell out of me are the types that think the 2nd amendment is 'obsolete' while using arguments like "Jefferson never had to deal with repeating firearms". Why do they want to render the population powerless and at the mercy of the Government for protection? Governments change, sometimes pretty rapidly. Even if yours is a benevolent one, it can't protect you all the time. It's just not possible. One of my favorite quotes is, "911: When seconds count, help is only minutes away"
No, there's no reason that I can see to disarm the population. I've yet to hear an argument from the gun control crowd that isn't based on FUD.
They will be worthless until the revolution comes. And even during a revolution you'll be relying on the military fragmenting (both to weaken the state and to arm your side). That will be far more important than your personal small arms. To put it bluntly, if the military doesn't fragment it won't be much of a revolution. (And you'll need to pray NATO/UN allies... etc, etc doesn't send additional forces to bolster the state side.)
Who said the guns were for the revolution? My point was that we still have a right that our British friends don't.
That depends on the issue, doesn't it? The last eight years seemed pretty sane for gun rights -- Clinton's gun ban expired, Heller was rightfully decided, DoJ issued memos saying that the 2nd amendment protects individual rights, retired law enforcement officers can now carry in any jurisdiction, etc, etc, etc.
And Americans stocking up on guns and ammo:
That would end if people didn't believe that Obama and the Democratic leadership were itching to infringe on their 2nd amendment rights. Most sportsman are extremely annoyed by the run on ammo and firearms because it's driving up prices for everybody -- but it isn't going to end until some sanity comes out of Washington.
And the Labour Party seems happy to let it happen.
Fixed that for you. I know lots of people in the UK that are aghast at what's happening.
A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
How do you control information without bullets? "Hmm, I see you have some information there.... [cocks gun]" ;) Even in the movie the bad guys used guns....
That's probably my favorite geek movie :)
Well, I am not going to feel safe until *everyone* is in jail.
I agree. Let's start with every member of the British Parliament and American Congress. I could even make a think of the children argument to justify it.