Ownership of guns.

I think that's an issue for the Gardai. Such a thread has been done here before.

NTM

eoin5 wrote:

In a robbery a theifs goal is to rob stuff. He/she would usually want to do this with as little problems as possible and would very rarely want to shoot the clerk for no good reason.

There you go with the 'rarely' again.

I reiterate: I do not like to leave my wellbeing solely to statistics, chance, and the good intentions of criminals.

If I'm a clerk and I'm faced with a gun to my temple the last thing running through my mind would be the word liberty.

When did I ever say anything about liberty? (Other than in reference to national uprising against an unresponsive government)

It is time to stay alive and the best chance of staying alive is to follow instructions from the theives, give them what they want and not pull out a gun and try to shoot one of them.

What makes you so sure? If I am unarmed, I have two choices: I can comply, and hope for the best, or I can resist, and probably lose. If armed, I have two choices: I can comply, and hope for the best, or I can resist, and possibly come out the better, possibly the worse. But that decision is mine to make: I can weigh the situation, and come to the conclusion of my chances on my own and make the decision on my own. If I think I couldn't come the better out of it, I could still passively comply just as you suggest. But I do not accept that I must always take that route.

What if Bruce missed or dropped his gun or any number of horrible possibilities and he got killed because of it?

But he didn't did he? Neither did the other guy yesterday. It seems they weighed their chances correctly. What if he complied completely and still got killed? There's no way of knowing, is there?

A weaker counter argument but valid nonetheless is that if there is no armed clerks then there is less risk to theives from the clerks and so the theives have less of a reason to shoot. Of course this means that robbery is a more attractive proposition but there are other more effective means of combatting this without putting clerks on the front lines.

I do not suggest that armed clerks are a panacea. They're just another line of defense against wrongdoing.

However, you are focusing purely on stand-offs/drawdowns. As I mentioned, California law presumes that a homeowner is in reasonable fear of his life if someone breaks into his house and may thus use lethal force. The nature of my house's design happens to be that my bedroom is easily defensible, with the door opening directly onto a straight staircase all the way down, funneled by walls on each side. There is no danger of trying to outdraw someone, and a firearm puts me in a position of great advantage, even if it's completely dark. (Or especially if it's completely dark) It's possible that the TV downstairs will get stolen, and maybe the dog killed/injured, but at least I'll be fairly secure and safe, with the odds highly in my favour if anyone starts up the stairs towards me. Nobody climbs the stairs, chances are nobody gets shot. I would not be in such a secure position if I were restricted in my right to have a firearm.

Why?

I'm talking about meeting the threat of lethal force, once made, with lethal force. You're talking about striking before threats of force are made.

I dont doubt that, but it certainly doesnt make it right in my opinion. Telling Joe Public that you can use lethal force in self defence and then telling him that he can carry a gun is just going to end up in more shootings.

And as long as the right people get shot, what's the issue? US laws are structured that going around shooting people for spurious reasons is generally frowned upon.

Or are you talking about people randomly going ape in cases of road rage and the like? From the justfacts website:

221,443 concealed carry licenses were issued in Florida between October of 1987 and April of 1994. During that time, Florida recorded 18 crimes committed by licensees with firearms.

Between September of 1987 and August of 1992, Dade County recorded 4 crimes committed by licensees with firearms. None of these crimes resulted in an injury. The record keeping program was abandoned in 1992 because there were not enough incidents to justify tracking them

As of 1998, nationwide, there has been 1 recorded incident in which a permit holder shot someone following a traffic accident. The permit holder was not charged, as the grand jury ruled the shooting was in self defense

That's a pretty decent law-abidingness rate. Find me a town in Ireland, size of over 200,000 persons, with 18 crimes in it in seven years.

If a weapon is deadly people are afraid to use it so the psychological aspect of such a weapon works both ways.

I've shot at people before, I see no reason to believe I should not be able to bring myself to do so again. Are you suggesting that because someone else might make the erroneous/irresponsible decision to arm themselves without being sure that they could shoot that I should be penalised and restricted from my possible courses of action?

If the weapon is seized by an assailant then it can be a very dangerous situation.

And if the victim is unarmed it can also be a very dangerous situation. The whole 'turned on yourself by the assailant' argument is rather overstated, and is actually fairly rare. But if it should happen that my firearm is turned upon me, it would be my decision and my actions which contributed to it, not some unknown person pontificating upon the concept.

Again its all just too powerful and just increases the risk to loss of life all around.

We may have a fundamental difference of opinion as to the tragedy involved in the loss of life of a criminal. The policy over here is simple: If you threaten to take a life, your life can be taken in defense. If you think that this is excessive, I would suggest that the solution is to convince people not to point guns at other people to try to rob them, not to turn people into mandatorily passive victims. The concept is, I would think, very simple and elegant: If you leave me alone, I will leave you alone. How can anyone argue with that? As long as nobody threatens me, my firearms will happily kill nothing more than a paper target, bowling pin, or coke can. I don't even hunt.

You declare I made a false conclusion, but you certainly havent proved it. I'd welcome it if you did (might save me some researching )

I rephrase: Your conclusion may or may not be false, but the method by which you came to it is unsupportable. As for the actual answer, I'd need to hunt around a bit myself.

NTM