Another mass shooting in the U.S

http://www.examiner.com/article/armed-homeowner-shoots-intruders-while-children-have-sleepover

Piliger wrote: »

Simply not true. It's just that the gun nut's arguments don't hold water and they make the same time wasting arguments all the time. It's all about them and their freedom and they don't give a sh1t about the innocent people dying all around us, including those small toddlers.

1. Any chance you could stop calling people "gun nuts"?
2. Saying gun owners don't give a sh1t is like saying owning a car and being a drinker means you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers.

Your emotional arguments are simply that, appeals to "think of the children", Now, as highlighted above, a gun saved a couple of kids in Georgia. Won't you think of the kids and allow moms to be armed if they choose to do so? Or does your gun control selfishness not give a sh1t about the kids? :rolleyes:

Here's another recent example...

A Sacramento, Calif. homeowner recently defended not only himself, but several children that were having a sleepover at his house, when three men attempted to break into his home. According to a report on December 23, 2012, by News 10, at a little after 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning the suspects attempted to break into the home and opened fire. The homeowner reacted quickly by grabbing his own gun and defending his home and the children inside.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine

haydar wrote: »

This is not how society works. You don't take the law into your own hands.
I know it's not always perfect and there are exceptions but if everyone did it we would end up in a world of lawlessness

That is exactly how society works, quite a number of societies enshrine a "castle doctrine" in law, including Ireland. You are not "tak[ing] the law into your own hands" but behaving in accordance with the law.

A Castle Doctrine (also known as a Castle Law or a Defense of Habitation Law) is an American legal doctrine that designates a person's abode (or, in some states, any place legally occupied, such as a car or place of work) as a place in which the person has certain protections and immunities and may in certain circumstances use force, up to and including deadly force, to defend against an intruder without becoming liable to prosecution.[1] Typically deadly force is considered justified, and a defense of justifiable homicide applicable, in cases "when the actor reasonably fears imminent peril of death or serious bodily harm to himself or another".[1] The doctrine is not a defined law that can be invoked, but a set of principles which is incorporated in some form in the law of most states. The term derives from the historic English common law dictum that "an Englishman's home is his castle".

haydar wrote: »

This is not how society works. You don't take the law into your own hands.

Actually, pretty much every society (including ours by the way, since long before the foundation of the state) explicitly permits self-defence, which is what that news story was about...

BattleCorp

Sparks wrote: »

Actually, pretty much every society (including ours by the way, since long before the foundation of the state) explicitly permits self-defence, which is what that news story was about...

Just to contradict you though add a comment, our State doesn't allow you to have a firearm for self defence purposes.

If you have one, then maybe it's ok to use it for self defence. But that's a big maybe. You have to use proportionate force. If you had a jury of Piliger clones, you'd hang no matter what the circumstances were because we are all gun nuts.

K-9

Okay, stop with the gun nuts references please, does nothing to help the debate, we want a civilised, informed debate, don't we?

BattleCorp wrote: »

Just to contradict you though, our State doesn't allow you to have a firearm for self defence purposes.

In fairness he didn't mention guns there.

BattleCorp

BattleCorp wrote: »

Just to contradict you though add one point, our State doesn't allow you to have a firearm for self defence purposes.

If you have one, then maybe it's ok to use it for self defence. But that's a big maybe. You have to use proportionate force. If you had a jury of Piliger clones, you'd hang no matter what the circumstances were because we are all gun nuts.

Post fixed, sorry.

BattleCorp wrote: »

Just to contradict you though, our State doesn't allow you to have a firearm for self defence purposes.

If you have one, then maybe it's ok to use it for self defence. But that's a big maybe. You have to use proportionate force. If you had a jury of Piliger clones, you'd hang no matter what the circumstances were because we are all gun nuts.

It's not a maybe at all. You're not allowed to have one for self defence, the same way you're not actually allowed have a baseball bat for self defence - the idea (as far as I can tell) being that if you could plan for it, you should have planned to avoid it. (But it's really hard to say you had the bat for self-defence because who's able to prove you didn't get it to take part in a softball game one time and just never got rid of it and it was a happy coincidence it was inside the door?)

But in extremis, even if you honestly felt you were in extremis incorrectly, you're allowed do anything you need to do to survive. The law couldn't be any other way, it'd be ridiculous if it was. These rumours we saw spread by the press when FG were moving the basis in law for this from case law to statute law were just that - rumours. Or ****e, to use the technical term. "Can't defend yourself, you'd be sued/arrested/go to prison" - carp. Hasn't ever happened, not here and not in the UK despite what Tony Martin's supporters would tell you.

The important thing - and I think this is the main differentiator between different jurisdictions - is where the line is drawn between self-defence and assault. We draw it between a person doing something while thinking "oh****oh****oh****I'mgoingtodie" and a person doing something while thinking "I'm going to teach that git a lesson". Me, I think that's reasonable, but others may have different opinions...

Bambi wrote: »

It happens far more often than mass shootings

So YOU say ........

BattleCorp wrote: »

Nothing can ever ever compensate for the mass murder of children or anybody for that matter. That's not up for debate.

Well actually it is.

My problem with your anti gun arguement is that you are lumping all shooters into the same category as Adam Lanza and every other nut job out there.

Yes. Those who want guns to be available to civilians.

Yes, guns were used to commit the murders. But my guns weren't. Nor were the guns of millions and millions of other law abiding people used to commit murder. The vast vast vast majority of gun owners are sensible people who don't go around commiting crime. This is a fact that you seem to be blindly ignoring.

This is a fatuous argument. Lanza was a 'law abiding person' the day before he slaughtered those people.

The fault is not with the gun. It's the fault of the person behind the gun.

This is the appalling level of argument that the gun lobby offer.

MadsL wrote: »

1. Any chance you could stop calling people "gun nuts"?

Looks like the Mods have given you that one ....

2. Saying gun owners don't give a sh1t is like saying owning a car and being a drinker means you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers.

Being a drink driver means you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers. If the Gun Lobby cared they would support gun control. They don't and they don't. QED.

Your emotional arguments are simply that, appeals to "think of the children",

So the slaughtering of 20 toddlers in their school room is an 'emotional' argument ? That is the most gross suggestion I have heard in a long long time.

Now, as highlighted above, a gun saved a couple of kids in Georgia. Won't you think of the kids and allow moms to be armed if they choose to do so? Or does your gun control selfishness not give a sh1t about the kids? :rolleyes:

Compared with the enormous number of people who get killed by their own guns in their homes in the US, allied with the appalling list of massacres like this school, and the extraordinary number of deaths by guns in the US ... you offer no evidence whatsoever that any more than a handful of lives are saved, especially when those lives would never have been at risk in the first place had the intruders not been able to get guns easier than I can buy milk.

aaakev

Piliger wrote: »

These gun nuts trying to quote their studies and argue about hammers and cars are just trying to sell the unsellable. Ordinary people do not need guns and they should be banned - period.

I have 3 guns for hunting, went through vigoras checks for each one by the guards, why should i not be allowed have them? Do you have a car? You dont NEED a car which by the way is more likely to kill you in ireland than a gun and that is probably true for most countries....

Witcher

I thought the Gardai and the DOJ had a dim view of firearms, apparently if we turned the licencing of firearms over to the public then farmers, target shooters, clay shooters, hunters would all be given slingshots:pac:

Makes me appreciate my Super even more:pac:

clairefontaine

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Media are culpable both news and the documentaries.

And it's nothing new

Back in 1966 shortly after the Texas University shootings a guy "I wanted to get known - to get myself a name" and executed a bunch of people.

http://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/smith-robert-benjamin.htm

There is something to this, visibility and fame and making your own movie with you as the big hero and the gun.

Media is part of it but also our leaning towards bring media into normal every day life. When I hear people using internet acronyms like STFU, actually articulating those letters when they are arguing, I start to wonder how much we are absorbing and bringing into normal life from the screens. It stopped me in my tracks.

Blame is so futile, but when you think about the visibility, the notice me aspects of these theatrical shootings, one cant help but think about family life too. Parents who pay no heed to their kids and leave their guns unlocked, not a great combination.

Access to guns makes this all the easier, but the gun isn't the root of the problem a lot of other things are at play for a cocktail product of unspeakable acts. No parent ever think it will be my kid who does this one day. Maybe it will be. Pay attention moms and dads.

Dyr

Sparks wrote: »

It's not a maybe at all. You're not allowed to have one for self defence, the same way you're not actually allowed have a baseball bat for self defence - the idea (as far as I can tell) being that if you could plan for it, you should have planned to avoid it. (But it's really hard to say you had the bat for self-defence because who's able to prove you didn't get it to take part in a softball game one time and just never got rid of it and it was a happy coincidence it was inside the door?)

Does owning a fire blanket mean that you didn't plan to avoid having your house go up in flames?

The idea is that is safer or more convenient for the authorities to ban everything so they can more easily convict anyone who contravenes that ban. Historically in this country it was also handy to disarm the great unwashed give their propensity for agrarian unrest.

clairefontaine

Blay wrote: »

I thought the Gardai and the DOJ had a dim view of firearms, apparently if we turned the licencing of firearms over to the public then farmers, target shooters, clay shooters, hunters would all be given slingshots:pac:

Makes me appreciate my Super even more:pac:

I believe Ireland and Britain are the only countries where the police don't carry guns.

Piliger wrote: »

So YOU say ........

Actually, so the data says. Depending on which survey you accept, the numbers range from about 800,000 to about 3,000,000 (source). There are other studies that put the figures much lower, like the NVCS survey which put it around the 100,000 level using different assumptions and survey methods. There's a lot of debate over which survey approach is the correct one and whether there's implied bias in the surveys; but the important point here is that even the number put forward by those opposed to private firearms ownership for these purposes are saying that there are over a hundred thousand cases every year where a firearm is used in legitimate self-defence.

That compared to seven mass shootings in 2012 (the worst year since 1998), which isn't a feel-good comparison by any means, but does provide perspective - 15,000 homicides by firearm this year, 140 killed and injured in mass shootings. These tragedies are like airline crashes - horrific things that we don't want to see, but if you're in charge of public policy, just not the area to focus resources on, not when 14,860 other people were killed in other shootings, whether gangland-related or otherwise; and the gang-related shootings are a major problem there, with 3,200 people dead in just 12 cities in 2012 (Chicago, New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Philadelphia have all seen more gangland killings this year on their own than in every mass shooting combined and then some - several of those cities are up above 500 people killed this year alone) (source ).

In fact, take it further - in the past 30 years, they've had over 60 mass shootings, and over a thousand casualties between those mass shootings, which is horrific... but also less than the death toll from gangs in Los Angeles and Chicago combined this year. (source).

Making those comparisons isn't some sort of "oh, this is normal, ignore it"
comment, before you say it is; it's just stating that there's obviously a major problem in the US with firearms violence, but that looking at mass shootings to figure out the cause of the problem is like looking at airline crashes when trying to figure out why so many people are killed in transportation accidents each year and ignoring deaths on the roads...

Piliger wrote: »

Being a drink driver means you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers.

He didn't say he was a drunk driver. He said he drank and that he was a driver, not that he was doing both at once. I don't mind a glass of wine every so often either, but I'd never drive after one. Does that mean I don't give a hoot about kids who are killed by drunk drivers?

So the slaughtering of 20 toddlers in their school room is an 'emotional' argument ?

Actually, it's the citing of that atrocity as the sole argument for a public policy that is an emotional argument.
And that's not in any way gross or offensive, it's just accurate. That atrocity is a motivation to change policy, that's a truism. It's also a case study to examine to try to determine how best to change policy, that's also a truism. But it is not an argument in and of itself. It just isn't, any more than chalk is cheese.

Piliger wrote: »

Being a drink driver means you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers. If the Gun Lobby cared they would support gun control. They don't and they don't. QED.

Except that is clearly not the analogy I made, you claim owning a gun somehow makes you responsible for the deaths of children, and that gun owners "don't give a sh1t" - By that logic owning a car and keeping a bottle of whiskey in the house means "you don't give a sh1t about kids killed by drunk drivers."

You twisted that in your reply to make the jump to "drink driver" owning both a car and a bottle of whiskey clearly do not make you a "drink driver", You seem to have a great difficulty separating criminal action from ownership and opportunity from action.

So the slaughtering of 20 toddlers in their school room is an 'emotional' argument ? That is the most gross suggestion I have heard in a long long time.

Really? The argument that the slaughtering of 20 toddlers means gun owners don't care about the lives of kids is a grosser suggestion in my view. You have made it several times now. Many gun owners keep guns precisely because they care about their kids, I gave you two recent examples of kids saved from harm by gun owners.

Compared with the enormous number of people who get killed by their own guns in their homes in the US,

Source? Number?

allied with the appalling list of massacres like this school, and the extraordinary number of deaths by guns in the US ... you offer no evidence whatsoever that any more than a handful of lives are saved,

On average in 1987-92 about 83,000 crime victims per year used a
firearm to defend themselves or their property.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt

Handful?

especially when those lives would never have been at risk in the first place had the intruders not been able to get guns easier than I can buy milk.

Most common weapon in home invasions is a knife - widely quoted as a US DoJ statistic - looking for a source.

Bambi wrote: »

Does owning a fire blanket mean that you didn't plan to avoid having your house go up in flames?

To be fair, fire's not sentient and doesn't have legal rights. I know what you mean, but it's a really awful analogy

The idea is that is safer or more convenient for the authorities to ban everything so they can more easily convict anyone who contravenes that ban. Historically in this country it was also handy to disarm the great unwashed give their propensity for agrarian unrest.

I've heard that said many times...
...it's just that I've never seen proof of the latter and the former was always a case of having as much proof for as against.

Also, don't forget that if we were to allow people to have firearms for self-defence in Ireland, you'd legally have to make it a right to have them for that purpose. Otherwise, you'd have a situation where the Gardai were getting to decide who could and who couldn't defend themselves (they've even had some pretty landmark cases on exactly that point in the US, as Manic pointed out earlier).

To be honest, I don't think we're at the stage in Ireland where a change that major is really something we need to be considering. I don't think we can even see that stage from here. Although I do think we're in error with our ban on pepper spray and tasers, but I may be biased, being married and having lived in a rough part of Dublin.

clairefontaine wrote: »

I believe Ireland and Britain are the only countries where the police don't carry guns.

And Norway, which prompted some obvious social questions of late. Also New Zealand, Iceland, a few smaller islands like Cook, Pitcairn, the Falklands, Gibralter, the Channel islands and the Isle of Man. But it is relatively rare and seems to be more based on historical accident than anything else and it can change overnight (Denmark was unarmed until 1974 and had never seen a police officer harmed; then two were shot in '74 and overnight they went to an armed police force).

Manic Moran

FISMA wrote: »

Just like what happened today
Georgia mom home alone with kids shoots ex-con intruder

That article from yesterday is an absolutely perfect case in point as to why a firearm is an excellent tool for self defence and why there is a great reluctance on the part of many law-abiding folk to remove them from our society.

Look at the sequence of events:
Mom and kids hide and barricade themselves into a room.
Police are called
Man advances on family apparently armed with a crowbar he used to force open the door. He gets to the family before the police get to the house. (Unsurprisingly. 50-feet vs X-many km)

What are the options available to Mom and kids at this point? He is at the door to the closet they are in
The kids are 9. If mom had a baseball bat of her own, would she be up to taking on an adult male with a crowbar? Could the three of them together overwhelm him? (Do you want to have your two 9-year-olds involved in a fight for your lives?)
They are now in last-ditch territory. No time for "let's try a Taser or pepper spray and see if it works", the next second may well define if they live or die.

If anything is going to work, the .38 she used will.

How can someone with a straight face tell me that denying that woman the practical ability to defend herself and her kids is a good thing?

So the slaughtering of 20 toddlers in their school room is an 'emotional' argument ? That is the most gross suggestion I have heard in a long long time.

There was a quote from a politician last week, along the lines of "let us not let the occasion of 20 children being killed go to waste without taking advantage of the opportunity to remove firearms from our streets" or something similar. The response I saw was "Because you realise that there is absolutely no empirical reason to support your proposed bans, and your only possibility of success relies on emotion"

Compared with the enormous number of people who get killed by their own guns in their homes in the US

Their problem. I know my own competence with my firearm, and I know who's living in my house. I believe the risk to myself and my family from my own firearms are within acceptable limits. If I am wrong, I'm the one who pays.

If I am right, I am also the one who benefits.

NTM

BattleCorp

Quote:

BattleCorp
My problem with your anti gun arguement is that you are lumping all shooters into the same category as Adam Lanza and every other nut job out there.

Piliger
Yes. Those who want guns to be available to civilians.

I'm a civilian. Almost every farmer who uses a gun for vermin control is a civilian. Almost every hunter is a civilian. Almost every target shooter is a civilian. Most of the Olympic athletes that take part in shooting/biathlon etc are civilians.

Do you think that we should all have our guns removed?

Sparks wrote: »

He didn't say he was a drunk driver. He said he drank and that he was a driver, not that he was doing both at once. I don't mind a glass of wine every so often either, but I'd never drive after one. Does that mean I don't give a hoot about kids who are killed by drunk drivers?

I believe so, yes. Absolutely.

Actually, it's the citing of that atrocity as the sole argument for a public policy that is an emotional argument.
And that's not in any way gross or offensive, it's just accurate. That atrocity is a motivation to change policy, that's a truism. It's also a case study to examine to try to determine how best to change policy, that's also a truism. But it is not an argument in and of itself. It just isn't, any more than chalk is cheese.

Wrong. It is a fact. 20 toddlers slaughtered as a direct result of ordinary people being able to buy guns for no valid reason.

Manic Moran wrote: »

Their problem. I know my own competence with my firearm, and I know who's living in my house. I believe the risk to myself and my family from my own firearms are within acceptable limits. If I am wrong, I'm the one who pays.

If I am right, I am also the one who benefits.

NTM

This is the kind of twisted and perverted thinking we don't want in our country.

Sparks wrote: »

Actually, so the data says. Depending on which survey you accept, the numbers range from about 800,000 to about 3,000,000 (source). There are other studies that put the figures much lower, like the NVCS survey which put it around the 100,000 level using different assumptions and survey methods. There's a lot of debate over which survey approach is the correct one and whether there's implied bias in the surveys; but the important point here is that even the number put forward by those opposed to private firearms ownership for these purposes are saying that there are over a hundred thousand cases every year where a firearm is used in legitimate self-defence.

Firstly these statistics carry no credibility whatsoever, coming from a country so endemically obsessed with the gun fetish. Secondly the vast majority of these incidents involve defence against others carrying a firearm. This proves the point in and of itself that guns are the cause of both sides of this ridiculous point.

aaakev

Piliger wrote: »

I believe so, yes. Absolutely.

What complete ****e that statement is :rolleyes:

Piliger wrote: »

Firstly these statistics carry no credibility whatsoever, coming from a country so endemically obsessed with the gun fetish. Secondly the vast majority of these incidents involve defence against others carrying a firearm. This proves the point in and of itself that guns are the cause of both sides of this ridiculous point.

criminals will get a gun if they want one wether they are banned or not

Piliger wrote: »

I believe so, yes. Absolutely.

Arf.

Wrong. It is a fact. 20 toddlers slaughtered as a direct result of ordinary people being able to buy guns for no valid reason.

Nope. It was not as a direct result of people buying firearms, and "no valid reason" is also wrong. Those kids are dead because a mentally ill person who was barred successfully from owning those firearms killed his own mother and stole her firearms. What law do you think would have stopped him if he was that messed up? Do you think a law banning all legally-held firearms would have stopped him? It didn't stop the Troubles over here, did it? It wouldn't stop bombings, arson, poison, or any one of the methods used for mass killings in the past fifty or sixty years. If someone is that deranged, no writing on a piece of paper is going to do much good in preventing them from doing harm because by that point, it's way too late.

Your problem, your direct cause, was mental health, and the lack of adaquate mental healthcare before he snapped and killed everyone. Not the tools used by the lunatic involved. You want to play whack-a-mole banning everything you could possibly use to do something heinous like this, you'll be at it your whole life and you still won't get everything, and people will still be dying because you won't look at the root cause of the problem.

Piliger wrote: »

Firstly these statistics carry no credibility whatsoever, coming from a country so endemically obsessed with the gun fetish.

You realise that they're being produced by both sides of the gun "debate" over there, right? That the 100,000 figure is coming from pro-ban advocates?
Or are you saying that you can't believe their numbers either?
(Actually, I'd agree with that, and so would the NAS and CDC).

Secondly the vast majority of these incidents involve defence against others carrying a firearm. This proves the point in and of itself that guns are the cause of both sides of this ridiculous point.

No, it doesn't. And not all dogs are poodles either.