Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[Dystemper]

And i'll say again, you're far more likely to use your weaponry on yourself or a loved one than ever in self defense. So shove your anecdotes.

But you just be that paranoid nut job you want to be. 85%+ home break ins are done while you're not home. Because go fucking figure if you're not an idiot you'd realize when the goal it to steal and sell your shit that works better when the person ISN'T HOME. of the remaining 14-15% more than half result in no physical altercations between the person breaking in and the home owner. For the rest access to guns means not only are you more likely to own a gun but so is the person breaking in meaning you're odds of a fatal interaction go up. The people who do tend to break in willingly while you're there are generally co-workers or family or friend's you've pissed off and there are plenty of other ways to defend against that.


I have no issues with firearm ownership except for the perverse cluture it's created in America where human lives are less important than your mental children's blanket. Home defense is irrefutably one of the most stupid reasons though. Just watch the episode of bullshit about self defense classes. Same idea. If you truly have nothing to fear than support the cdc's ability to research into gun violence statistics

A firearm is used a estimated 1.5-2 million times a year in self defense or to prevent a violent crime. There are over 100 million gun owners in the usa. If the odds were more likely to use your weapon on your self or a loved one then the statistics would prove that and be much much larger.

[RaoBurning]

Some really good points. Schools should have training and exercises on how to handle a active shooter situation. The Southwest School district in Indiana does. http://fox59.com/2014/09/08/exclusiv...art-shootings/

We're starting back up our active shooter/full lock-down drills starting next week. I'm predicting it will go horribly, since my students listen about as well as a deaf cow in India.

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A firearm is used a estimated 1.5-2 million times a year in self defense or to prevent a violent crime. There are over 100 million gun owners in the usa. If the odds were more likely to use your weapon on your self or a loved one then the statistics would prove that and be much much larger.

[Citation required]

I'd also like a graph comparing those incidents against incidents of violence per annum going back to, say, 1950, if you have one handy.

[Ghostpanther]

We're starting back up our active shooter/full lock-down drills starting next week. I'm predicting it will go horribly, since my students listen about as well as a deaf cow in India.

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[Citation required]

I'd also like a graph comparing those incidents against incidents of violence per annum going back to, say, 1950, if you have one handy.

Well, it is better than doing nothing and wailing your arms in the air and then curling into a ball waiting to be shot. There are other measures too which can work. Such as a metal detectors and armed guards at the entrances.

Defensive usage cases of firearms are hard to measure when a lot of times, they are never reported to the police, so there is no record of them. But several studies have been done which suggest a modest estimate they are used hundreds of thousand times a year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-self-defense

[Macaquerie]

Untrue. The shoe bomber was immediately mobbed by the passengers on his plane, because 9/11 had made very clear that the age of "hostage situations" on a plane meaning 30 hours on the tarmac in Tripoli was over, and that if the person trying to use a device on or take over a plane succeeded, you were dead. Conditioning people to approach an active shooter situation the same way is not actually impossible or unreasonable. The shooter is there precisely because the intended targets will have few if any avenues of escape. Closing distance, throwing things, anything that prevents him firing, or at least firing with precision, is more opportunity for someone to engage with force -- ideally with a concealed weapon but otherwise with anything to hand. Doesn't take internet balls, or heroism, just takes approaching the situation from the mindset that if the shooter can even get up to steam, you're already dead.

So pretty much you want to turn all teachers into the trigger happy cops, and any student that so much as tries to pull something out of his pocket without permission will be shot dead on the spot. This is what I can't stand about gun nuts, you KNOW that the solutions you propose will only create more problems but you keep parroting the same talking points anyway, because you have to hold onto your man Barbies by any means necessary.

[PhaelixWW]

And i'll say again, you're far more likely to use your weaponry on yourself or a loved one than ever in self defense. So shove your anecdotes.

Let me repost something from much earlier ITT:

The fact that people aren't capable of looking at these reports and analyzing them logically frustrates and saddens me.

The study (of which the abstract is the only thing available), ignores the most common defensive usage of a firearm: the simple threat of use. They only count the times when a firearm is fired defensively, ignoring the vast, vast, vast majority of instances in which the existence of the force-magnifying firearm is enough to deter the criminal without a shot being fired. Hell, it doesn't even include instances with a warning shot. It only includes times when the criminal is actually shot.

Furthermore, the use of the word "likely to be involved in" stretches the truth, since it certainly implies (and from which people definitely infer) that the gun at home was the same gun used to commit those injuries and assaults. Indeed, as I've stated before, the fact that these homes owned a firearm in the first place might have more to do with the relative crime level in the area. So to presences of a gun may not be the causal factor but merely a second effect of a similar causal factor - higher crime rates.

Third, this study makes it sound like they're comparing homes with guns to homes without guns...

Newsflash: They're not.

They're comparing violence against gun homes vs. violence used in defense of gun homes. They don't even address non-gun homes. Say, for example, that guns are used defensively 1/20 as often as someone is harmed by a gun in gun homes. That doesn't preclude the possibility that in non-gun homes, people may be 1/40 as likely to be able to defend themselves as they are to be injured by gunfire. In that case, gun homes would actually be shown to be safer than non-gun homes.

Do you see? The studies that you link don't say what you think they say. But through the transmutation of the internet... "Guns cause you be less safe!"

85%+ home break ins are done while you're not home. Because go fucking figure if you're not an idiot you'd realize when the goal it to steal and sell your shit that works better when the person ISN'T HOME. of the remaining 14-15% more than half result in no physical altercations between the person breaking in and the home owner. For the rest access to guns means not only are you more likely to own a gun but so is the person breaking in meaning you're odds of a fatal interaction go up. The people who do tend to break in willingly while you're there are generally co-workers or family or friend's you've pissed off and there are plenty of other ways to defend against that.

From the BJS study on burglaries:

*A household member was present in roughly 1 million burglaries and became victims of violent crimes in 266,560 burglaries.

*Overall, 61% of offenders were unarmed when violence occurred during a burglary while a resident was present. About 12% of all households violently burglarized while someone was home faced an offender armed with a firearm.

[Maneo]

So pretty much you want to turn all teachers into the trigger happy cops, and any student that so much as tries to pull something out of his pocket without permission will be shot dead on the spot. This is what I can't stand about gun nuts, you KNOW that the solutions you propose will only create more problems but you keep parroting the same talking points anyway, because you have to hold onto your man Barbies by any means necessary.

I don't think anyone is saying arm all teachers.

I think what people are saying if a teacher can legally carry let them ... remove this gun free zone BS.

Soft Target vs Hard Target bad guys will chose a soft target every time.

[RaoBurning]

Well, it is better than doing nothing and wailing your arms in the air and then curling into a ball waiting to be shot. There are other measures too which can work. Such as a metal detectors and armed guards at the entrances.

Defensive usage cases of firearms are hard to measure when a lot of times, they are never reported to the police, so there is no record of them. But several studies have been done which suggest a modest estimate they are used hundreds of thousand times a year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-self-defense

For full disclosure, we do already have a school resource officer on campus pretty much all day every day, fully armed. Taser, mace, beating stick thingy, pistol, vest. The usual. And now there's talk of adding a gunsafe for the administrators just in case. Which, frankly, is goddamned silly and really just goes to show how off the deep end we've gone.

And yeah metal detectors and stuff might work, but my school district is ridiculously poor. We can barely afford to keep IAs in classrooms let alone put out the salary required to post a guard at every school. Hell, I only take home $12,000 as it is.

[Macaquerie]

I don't think anyone is saying arm all teachers.

I think what people are saying if a teacher can legally carry let them ... remove this gun free zone BS.

Soft Target vs Hard Target bad guys will chose a soft target every time.

Your second point contradicts your first one. If some teachers are armed, and are therefore "hard targets," then the remaining teachers will be more vulnerable and feel compelled to carry as well, even if they don't want to.

[Maneo]

Your second point contradicts your first one. If some teachers are armed, and are therefore "hard targets," then the remaining teachers will be more vulnerable and feel compelled to carry as well, even if they don't want to.

See that is where concealed carry comes in, didn't realize that had to be clarified.

Don't think any school districts allow the teachers or staff to open carry.

Anyhow w/concealed carry the bad guys don't know who is a hard or soft target ...

[Macaquerie]

See that is where concealed carry comes in, didn't realize that had to be clarified.

Don't think any school districts allow the teachers or staff to open carry.

Anyhow w/concealed carry the bad guys don't know who is a hard or soft target ...

Concealed carry isn't going to save you if every student looking to shoot up his school knows that the vast majority of teachers have no interest in carrying and to just avoid that one teacher who used to be a marine or whatever, and

[Maneo]

Concealed carry isn't going to save you if every student looking to shoot up his school knows that the vast majority of teachers have no interest in carrying and to just avoid that one teacher who used to be a marine or whatever, and

That is the point of concealed carry ya know?

You don't know who is carrying or not....

It is like you think people go around advertising they carry. If you live in the states I bet you pass and interact w/people every day who are packing. The point of conceal carry is not to advertise it.

[Macaquerie]

That is the point of concealed carry ya know?

You don't know who is carrying or not....

It is like you think people go around advertising they carry. If you live in the states I bet you pass and interact w/people every day who are packing. The point of conceal carry is not to advertise it.

But school shootings don't usually involve random strangers waltzing in, they are committed by current or former students who would know the teachers and have a pretty good idea who would be carrying, or at least who would know how to handle a gun in a pressure situation and who wouldn't.

[PhaelixWW]

But school shootings don't usually involve random strangers waltzing in, they are committed by current or former students who would know the teachers and have a pretty good idea who would be carrying, or at least who would know how to handle a gun in a pressure situation and who wouldn't.

And how exactly would they know that?

[Maneo]

And how exactly would they know that?

My question exactly.

My wife is a demure lady in her early 40s, but know what she is a crack fucking shot. She concealed carried for just about as long I have.

Not everyone who carries concealed is a former fucking Marine, Spec Ops, Cop what ever. Majority of people who conceal carry are just regular folks. Think that is what Macaquerie is having trouble grasping.

You not from the States Macaquerie?

[Stormdash]

So pretty much you want to turn all teachers into the trigger happy cops, and any student that so much as tries to pull something out of his pocket without permission will be shot dead on the spot. This is what I can't stand about gun nuts, you KNOW that the solutions you propose will only create more problems but you keep parroting the same talking points anyway, because you have to hold onto your man Barbies by any means necessary.

I can see how someone without the slightest gd clue what I was talking about might interpret it that way, sure.

[Ghostpanther]

For full disclosure, we do already have a school resource officer on campus pretty much all day every day, fully armed. Taser, mace, beating stick thingy, pistol, vest. The usual. And now there's talk of adding a gunsafe for the administrators just in case. Which, frankly, is goddamned silly and really just goes to show how off the deep end we've gone.

And yeah metal detectors and stuff might work, but my school district is ridiculously poor. We can barely afford to keep IAs in classrooms let alone put out the salary required to post a guard at every school. Hell, I only take home $12,000 as it is.

At least your school has taken some attempts to make it not too easy for a shooter to have easy access to helpless victims. Good to hear about the armed guard. Not sure how much metal detectors cost and I agree, school teachers have a rough, but very important job and should be paid well. I think in your state one can carry a firearm concealed without a license?

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That is the point of concealed carry ya know?

You don't know who is carrying or not....

It is like you think people go around advertising they carry. If you live in the states I bet you pass and interact w/people every day who are packing. The point of conceal carry is not to advertise it.

A lot of them do not know. They hate firearms and want the US to join the other countries, who do not give their citizens the means to defend themselves with firearms. All the time citing stats which are meaningless for the US when we have issues to deal with none of them may have.

Some states even have in their law for conceal/carry, not to print when you are carrying I been told. Not sure if that is true, but it makes sense.

[Macaquerie]

My question exactly.

My wife is a demure lady in her early 40s, but know what she is a crack fucking shot. She concealed carried for just about as long I have.

Not everyone who carries concealed is a former fucking Marine, Spec Ops, Cop what ever. Majority of people who conceal carry are just regular folks. Think that is what Macaquerie is having trouble grasping.

You not from the States Macaquerie?

Of course I am from the states, but just like 95% of the country I've never felt the need to carry a concealed firearm nor would I want to live in a society where there's anywhere close to an even chance that a random bystander is packing heat. I'm sure that most people with licenses are just regular folks though, which is exactly why it would be insane to put the lives of children in their hands. Oh yeah, the mild mannered math teacher might go to the range every once in a while and start thinking that he's seen a thing or two, but when shit hits the fan I would wager he's much more likely to shoot himself or an innocent bystander than take down an active shooter.

[Stormdash]

Of course I am from the states, but just like 95% of the country I've never felt the need to carry a concealed firearm nor would I want to live in a society where there's anywhere close to an even chance that a random bystander is packing heat. I'm sure that most people with licenses are just regular folks though, which is exactly why it would be insane to put the lives of children in their hands. Oh yeah, the mild mannered math teacher might go to the range every once in a while and start thinking that he's seen a thing or two, but when shit hits the fan I would wager he's much more likely to shoot himself or an innocent bystander than take down an active shooter.

Then... you really got nowhere to go in America. You're probably never farther than a hundred feet or so from a privately possessed firearm. No that is not a painstakingly literal statement meant to address a trip to Yosemite, but CCW is a much more common lifestyle than you are apparently ready to admit to yourself. If you live in any kind of populated area (let's say 75k or above?) you're going to share a check-out line or bank line or a restaurant dining room today with someone who is armed -- unless you're living in one of the crime-ridden municipal fiefdoms that does all it can to prevent it.

As for the last sentence... just mindless counter-factual nonsense. Crime does get stopped with concealed firearms, including active shooters. Sutherland Springs was only one example, others have been stopped before they could get started by exactly the sort of vigilant threat assessment I mentioned above. What you don't here as much of is people randomly shooting themselves in the foot when attempting to use a gun in self-defense or defense of others.

[Deleted]

Is there anyone in this group who have shot other ppl? How and why?

[Ghostpanther]

Is there anyone in this group who have shot other ppl? How and why?

Not I. And I hope I never have to. If I did, it would be in self defense of myself or others. I was trained to however as a combat soldier in the US Army. Odds are overwhelming I would never have to use my firearm to shoot someone. But I like being prepared. Shit happens.

My wife had a cousin who was shot to death attacking another person with a knife when he broke into his apartment.