The Problems With Using A Gun For Self Defense

Discussion in 'Guns & Weapons' started by Brittany Houser, May 17, 2015.

  1. Brittany Houser

    Brittany Houser Veteran Member
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  2. Val White

    Val White Veteran Member
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    With respect like many British I genuinely do not comprehend the American gun culture and consequences. We read and watch these gun crimes in disbelief that they actually happen.

    All I can say is I wonder how many Mothers and Fathers of our age are thinking ' thank God I am not raising children in this day and age'
     
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  3. Sheldon Scott

    Sheldon Scott Supreme Member
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    It's not the guns, Val. Something has gone wrong with society. There is no respect for life or property. Guns have always been plentiful in the United States. Before 1968 anyone could by a gun locally or by mail. We didn't have all these senseless shootings back then. There have been numerous gun laws passed in the last 50 years and the problem keeps getting worse.
    I don't know what the answer is but passing more laws won't help. I got my first gun when I was eleven years old. I'll have to count but I probably own a couple of dozen guns right now. I've never shot anyone.
     
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  4. Brittany Houser

    Brittany Houser Veteran Member
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    Exactly! When I was a child, everybody owned guns! People hunted and used them for protection ,if necessary. I can assure you that the guns were always within a grown-up's reach. The kids in the neighborhood were told from the ground up not to touch the guns, or else! We knew what that, "or else" meant. No one, I repeat, no one I knew ever got shot! I will always stand by mine and my family's right to owns weapons.
     
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  5. Val White

    Val White Veteran Member
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    As I have always respected other countries laws and customs I do hear what you say about guns, however understanding your gun law is a different matter.

    Although as Shelden points out 'something has gone wrong with society' getting the problem sorted is a non starter whilst you have The rights to bear arms :) .
     
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    Last edited: May 18, 2015
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  6. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    I think drugs have short circuited our national moral nervous system. I read where a teen-age boy killed his Grandmother with a hammer, because she refused to give him money for drugs. ...a HAMMER! :eek:
     
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  7. Val White

    Val White Veteran Member
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    I don't have answers Joe. There will always be those that will take a life for one reason or another, but it seems the mind set of our younger generation is I want it now or else but I don't want to work for it. I don't think that is all to do with drugs.

    If you compare our values I venture that a lighter parental/schooling/authoritative hand has not done our children any favours but given carte blanche to act as one wishes
     
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  8. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    @Val White , I know that it seems like we could solve the whole problem by removing the guns so people didn't shoot each other. Maybe, if no one had ever had guns here; that would have worked better; but it is not the answer now.
    Even countries that do not allow easy gun ownership are having issues with violence, and many of the attackers DO use firearms. Criminals, wherever they are, can find a source for weapons.
    The answer might not just be drugs, and it might be partially a culture where kids have grown up thinking that they are "entitled" to everything they want, regardless of how they acquire it. But, I personally think that it is even more than that.
    Look at the riots we have been having here, and other countries around the world. Many of those are not happening with guns, they are rioters that are burning vehicles and buildings, and using baseball bats and other similar weapons too just totally ruin anything they can . In many cases, the actual reason for the protest is not even important, and is just an excuse to vandalize and destroy, regardless if it affects the outcome of the protest or not.
    Our society has become an ultra-violent culture everywhere, and if you look back to the time when we were growing up, I think that you will agree that there was less violence anywhere in the world, guns or no guns.
     
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  9. Val White

    Val White Veteran Member
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    There has been a huge shift in the behaviour of our young generation and as I pointed out in my comment I genuinely believe that is is because they no longer have a directions and guidelines to follow.

    Previous generations knew from an early age not to do this or that from parents, school and police and it was backed up with suitable punishments should there be misdemeanors. Today the young ones know full well that there is little to deter them should they wish to misbehave as parents, schools and police hands are tied.

    There is a very old adage. Spare the rod spoil and the child, and that has now come home to roost.
     
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  10. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    When I was in high school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was common to see rifles mounted in the back windows of trucks in the student parking lot, particularly during hunting season. I had a .22 rifle when I was twelve, an a 30-30 caliber rifle when I was fourteen. Everyone I knew had guns yet, when a school teacher murdered a student after molesting her about ten years after I graduated, that was the first murder in the county in more than a century, and a gun wasn't used for that one. I don't know about other countries but, in the United States, our police departments rarely, except by accident, serve to protect the public. Rather, they investigate crimes after the fact. If you look around, fewer and fewer police departments are using the motto, "to protect and to serve," any longer. Criminals aren't concerned with gun laws, because they are criminals, so the only people who are disarmed through gun regulation are honest people, who are then left helpless in their own homes, which is what we see in Chicago, Washington DC, and other cities where guns are outlawed.
     
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  11. Brittany Houser

    Brittany Houser Veteran Member
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    Ditto Ken! That is the logic behind the NRA, and all of us who are proponents of the 2nd.amendment. Criminals do NOT obey gun laws. We have to be proactive in defending ourselves and our families.
    BTW, I remember high school boys having guns in the back of their pick-ups! I had forgotten all about that. AHHH nostalgia! Those really were the good old days!
     
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  12. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    I was in Ruidosa, New, Mexico at a bike rally one October when I went to buy a cap in Midtown. Texas had a law at that time helmets were required. New Mexico had no such law. Shooting erupted across the street at a large bar. One guy ran out and took off on his bike. It seems a member of the Banditos and another group had had a disagreement and the bandito shot two of the other members, killing one and wounding another. I had dinner with five of the other gang that night. I asked them about thew shooting. They said they knew who did the shooting, knew where he lived in Phoenix and where he worked. They said there was no hurry, they'd get him when he least expected it. I heard on the grape vine weeks later they did just that along with three of his buddies. I was never part of a gang but I rode with some guys I didn't want to tangle with.
     
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  13. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    I found an interesting article that gives a VERY different view of the killings in Waco. According to this article, the police had sharpshooter snipers on the roof of the restaurant before the motorcycle clubs even arrived, and well before the supposed gang shootout started.
    There are several different stories in the news media of how the fight even started. One account says that the fight started in the bathroom at the restaurant, and carried out into the parking lot, and that fight was with knives, not guns. Another version is that one gang member ran over the foot of another cyclist, and a third version is that the fight started over an altercation about a parking space.
    According to the reports, no bullet casings were found on the ground where the motorcycles were parked, and it is believed that all nine of the victims that were killed were actually shot by the snipers on the roof, as well as the ones that were injured.
    Over 170 witnesses to the incident were arrested, and are being held without charges, but have million dollar bonds against them, so they can't be bailed out of the jail. Motorcycles and weapons that were perfectly legal have been confiscated from people who have no criminal charges against them. Some of these people have never been arrested and many are military veterans with no history of any kind of criminal activity or violence.

    This report begs the question of what is really going on here ? Was this actually a gang fight as was reported by CNN and the other mainstream mediia, or is it instead, yet another case of our law enforcement militarization against legal citizans ? ?

    https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/first-they-came-for-the-bikers/
     
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  14. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I am always willing to believe a conspiracy theory, since I am quite sure that we are living in the midst of several real conspiracies. I have trouble believing that the police would determine, in advance, that they were going to ambush someone. There are bad people in every group, I am sure, but most people become police officers with the right intentions, I trust. In twenty years as a paramedic, I have become close to several police officers and I just can't see that, at least not among municipal police or sheriff's departments. Federal police, perhaps. During the federal raid on the Branch Davidians outside of Waco several years ago, I was hanging out with a few people who were with the Texas DPS and the Hidalgo Sheriff's Department, and they were appalled. The way that the federal government handled the raid was intended to have a bad outcome, they asserted. Previously, the local sheriff's department had responded to complaints against the Davidians, had knocked on the door, and was let in. Rather, the federal police came in through an upstairs window after shooting tear gas into the place.

    I believe that the majority of the people who we have in our local, county and state police departments are (to varying degrees) good, honest people. They are people, however, with all of the prejudices and failings that come with being a human being. The young boy who was shot to death while playing with a toy gun, I think it was in Cincinnati, was an awful case of police wrongdoing, yet I doubt that the officer involved intended that he was going to shoot a young black child that day. He probably didn't even consider himself to be a bigot, yet I am convinced that if the boy had been white, he wouldn't have assumed that it was a real gun. He saw a young black boy with a gun, and assumed that the gun was real, although the dispatcher had said that it was possibly a toy gun. Had the boy been white, the cop would probably have remembered that the dispatcher had suggested that it might be a toy gun, and that the boy was just playing. Racism doesn't always involve hatred; sometimes it's simply the result of unfamiliarity.

    Biker groups have largely earned a reputation for being dangerous. Although this certainly doesn't apply to all of them, I can see that people might view them as such. In Maine, and perhaps elsewhere, the American Legion has a biker group who, although they are made up of military veterans who are not outlaws, you wouldn't know that by looking at them.

    Pretty much everyone will make a mistake at their job at one point or another, but most of us don't risk our lives or our careers when we make a mistake. The police have to make split-second decisions with both their careers and their lives on the line. Recognizing this, I think it's understandable that they might cover for one another when they see an opportunity to get away with it. That doesn't make it right of course, but I can understand it.
     
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  15. Gary Ridenour

    Gary Ridenour Veteran Member
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    seems like a good place to start wars. anyone remember David Koresh and the Branch Davidians?? that prompted Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Gov building in OK. and Ruby Rudge
     
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