I would venture to say that possessing a pencil would increase your chances of being poked accidentally, eventhough that is a remote scenario for people who handle their pencils safely.

Agreed, the problem is that with guns you don't get poked accidentally, you get shot dead. That is why when calculating deaths due to guns you need to include accidents, misguided attempts at self defence, burglars who only shot you because you pulled a gun first, your child finding the weapon and thinking it is a toy, and the burglar shooting you with your own weapon. In all of those scenarios you are equally dead, it makes no difference how you got there.

If you are going to be pro-gun then be that way based on your constitutional rights, your fear of an unjust government, or your need to protect yourself from aliens for all I care, but there is no point in pretending the statistics are in your favor.

-Mike

Well good lord, look how many [bleeding heart liberal voice] children [/bleeding heart liberal voice] get killed every year in auto accidents. I guess we'd better take all cars off the road to keep everyone safe. Or how many people accidentally drown in their pool in the back yard, we don't really need those do we? I mean, they're just for fun. God, how many people die every year because they fell asleep with a cigarette in their hands? Well, let's rule out smoking at home too. Oh but wait, I heard that second hand smoke kills milions of people a year, let's just ban smoking altogether. While we're at it, having electricity in your home GREATLY increases you and your family's risk of being electrocuted. Perhaps the amish have it right after all. No, wait, they have all those nasty farm implements around. Hmmmm.

If you want my opinion, I'd much rather have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it. And yes, my point in my earlier post was that my area has extremely low crime because trespassing on someone's property around here will get you an ass full of rock salt buckshot. If you go into their house, it turns into real buckshot. If we were to give away all our guns, we become people who live a mile away from each other and therefore easy pickings.

well.... I live in a country were firearms are illegal.... I have never been robbed/hijacked/abused or felt threatened in any way (exept when I am in a bar and someone tries to pick a fight with me) I seriously dont miss owning a gun, or miss the fact that my neighbour would try to kill me if I rang his doorbell asking to barrow some sugar.
Gun control works... And I bet I feel and ARE alot safer than most of you guys, atleast from the sound of it.
I have done military duty, so I am not totally unfamiliar with firearms. Allthough I really miss being able to shoot with them on a firing range.... But I dont want them back at the cost of my safety...
I miss that feeling of my old 7.62mm machine gun blasting away... *dreams back to the good old days* (2 years ago...=)
And I really would like to try shooting some 12.7 mm guns to.... I never got the chance of doing that.... and I probably never will again....

well.... I live in a country were firearms are illegal.... I have never been robbed/hijacked/abused or felt threatened in any way (exept when I am in a bar and someone tries to pick a fight with me) -ilDuce

I don't know what country you're in; but apparently they still need to outlaw alcohol.

Outlawing alcohol in Sweden would never work.

This quote from Cypress Hill explains why Be-Real keeps a gun in his house:

Here's an example, just a little sample.
How I could just kill a man!
One-time tried to come in my home,
take my chrome, I said "Yo, it's on.
Take cover son, or you're ass-out.
How you like my chrome?", then I watched the rookie pass out.
Didn't have to blast him, but I did anyway...
Hahaha... that young punk had to pay.
So I just killed a man!

Just thought I'd share. The song came on while I was reading this thread.

Whaddaya mean? The ban was a rousing success in the US!

Yeah, if you were in the mafia.

I live in a country were firearms are illegal

I'll assume you mean illegal to carry / use as a tool intended for self defense.

Because we do have a fairly large pool of weapons in this country - counting hunting weapons alone, there is about 1.1 million in a population of about 8.8 million.
To that you need to add the guns used for target / sports shooting (haven't found a number), the guns that are stolen each year (mainly hunting weapons from homes, as the control of military weapons in storage has improved the last years) and the weapons smuggled into the country (mainly from the old east bloc countries).

/Michael

Well good lord, look how many [bleeding heart liberal voice] children [/bleeding heart liberal voice] get killed every year in auto accidents

The difference being that the primary purpose of an auto is not to kill living things. I didn't mean to come of as a BHL either, there are good arguments for and against outlawing guns and I haven't formed a particularly strong personal belief either way. The point I was trying to make is that if you are going to argue against gun control you better have a pretty compelling argument as the downside (guns in the hands of people who aren't properly trained or who intend to cause violence upon you) is severe. Manipulating statistics that are not in your favor is not a compelling argument (to me at least).

If your position is that more guns means safer homes than you should provide the information to prove it. Provide numbers for burglaries that have been peacefully prevented because the burglar surrendered or fled when he realized the homeowner had a gun. Provide home invasion rates that compare highly armed areas (Texas?) to areas where guns are less common or banned entirely. If those numbers are not in your favor then give us a good reason why so many citizens should be armed.

If your only point was that you personally feel safer with a gun in your house than I certainly won't tell you how to feel. Hopefully you know how to use it and take the necessary precautions so that others can't use it.

-Mike

If your position is that more guns means safer homes than you should provide the information to prove it.

The probably best work (no one has yet, AFAIK, been able to refute it, several that have tried have gone down hard) is John Lott's "More guns, less crime". Google should also pull up lots of comments on it. Interesting talk, (.ram) here.

It only covers US conditions, obviously. Trying to extend these sorts of statistics between countries is probably pointless, as social conditions vary...

/Michael

In reply to:

---

don't pretend that chasing them across the countryside while dressed up is making any difference

---

Perhaps you should check your history of fox hunting.
Fox hunting DID serve a purpose, it really did control the fox population. Fox in the UK had NO natural predator and shooting them was unrealistic. Farmers relied on huntsman and their packs to control the fox population. They were only able to kill the weakest fox. Just like natural selection.

The fancy dress came out of respect for the farmers and land owners. The red coats came from Thomas Pink who made a waterproof red coat for a huntsman out of left over British army boiled wool.

Today Fox hunts provide incentive to keep land open and undeveloped. They also carry on a tradition of keeping a working pack of hounds and the skill of riding through rough country.
Unfortunately the folks who are anti hunt see fit to bomb kennels and string up wire to decapitate unsuspecting riders or to break a horses leg, because it's more humane than a fox hunt.

Have you ever seen a fox hunt to completion? I suspect not. The fox is generally killed within a second of being caught by the hounds. Have you seen a fox killed by poison? It's not pretty and generally fox who have been poisoned(the preferred method of farmers today) are more dangerous to humans in there last few hours while they slowly struggle against the poison.

Hunting and fishing (also on the list to be banned in the UK) provide incentive to people to keep a part of the countryside natural. If you take that away then you are left with golf courses wich are huge strains on local resources for water and pollution run off.

Don't be so quick to condemn our ancestors way of life, we were better off when we knew where our food came from.

we were better off when we knew where our food came from

So you've eaten fox, then?

... fox hunting ...

That would be more convincing if the people instigating the fox hunts hadn't often raised the fox in a kennel themselves.

If they were really controlling the fox population, that'd be one thing, but they simply want to participate in killing an animal in the guise of population control.

I completely recognize the historical necessity for fox hunting. That necessity is gone. (One wonders, however, how the fox came to be overpopulated in the first place. Was it an import from elsewhere? Did its natural predators die off?)

Having some experience in this, the hunts that raise fox generally don't do anything more than chase them. It wouldn't make sense to hand raise a fox then kill it. You wouldn't have very many hunts that way.

Unfortunately even the drag hunts are being banned in the UK. (Drag hunts are where an artificial scent has been laid for the hounds to follow it.)

No I don't eat fox, but I do eat game fish and deer. And once upon a time hunting was the way you got your meat. and if you raised pigs and chickens you had to kill them yourself if you wanted to eat them. How horrible!

I have seen kids today who won't eat a fresh egg out of the chicken coop, but an egg McMuffin Oh boy!

How horrible!

Nothing horrible about it. If you're killing the animal for fun, then that's horrible.

Because we do have a fairly large pool of weapons in this country - counting hunting weapons alone, there is about 1.1 million in a population of about 8.8 million. - mtempsch

yeah.... thats true.... Allthough... I was thinking in the lines of easy conceilable handguns, and weapons actually used in selfdefence. Allthough the amount of handguns are increasing I still dont feel atleast threatened. I hope you feel the same?? My arguments was meant to explain that i DO feel perfectly safe without owning a gun... And we DO have a smaller percentege than USA in counts of deaths by guns. Not saying if its accident/selfdefence or anything else... Death should never be in the hands of anybody else than mother nature...

I was thinking in the lines of easy conceilable handguns, and weapons actually used in selfdefence

So I assumed: I'll assume you mean illegal to carry / use as a tool intended for self defense.

I still dont feel atleast threatened. I hope you feel the same??

Most certainly - where I live. But there are areas where I wouldn't comfortably walk at night, unless in a fair sized group. And we can only hope that we are allowed to stay comfortable - there isn't anything (practical) we can do about it.

Death should never be in the hands of anybody else than mother nature...

In a perfect world... As the world is, I'd prefer it to be in available in my hands if someone else is intent to apply it to me. Won't argue with Mother Nature though

/Michael

Death should never be in the hands of anybody else than mother nature...

Of course this is true; human’s shouldn’t kill either other. Neither should they steal from one another or rape one another or make war on one another. However, we don’t live in a world where “should” reigns. Instead people do all manner of despicable things. The question is whether deadly force is justified in stopping another human being from doing something he or she shouldn’t. If someone comes into my home and starts to kill my family, I will use deadly force to stop them if I can. It may not be the way the world should be, but sometimes deadly force is necessary to thwart a greater evil.

Of course when exactly deadly force is necessary is a nebulous area, and while I’m sure most of us would agree to its use in the above scenario, this line becomes blurred with lesser offenses. However, to say that we can never use deadly force is putting ourselves into a position of being at the mercy of those who would.

Death should never be in the hands of anybody else than mother nature...

Please note that that line wasn't mine. Since the posts are adjacent, most will see that, but if they had been further apart...

AFAICT, orange has traditionally been used for first level quoting on this board, yellow for second level. (Though sometimes I fall into the usage from another board I'm on and use bold for quoting - should probably get with the program and use q, qq, etc)

/Michael

Please note that that line wasn't mine.

Yes, sorry about that; I knew it wasn't yours.
In fact, I copied it from the origional and just accidently clicked "reply" on the wrong post. I'm not sure what I can do to fix it now, though.

I'm not sure what I can do to fix it now, though

No worries , just wanted to point it out.

/Michael

yes... you are right... Somewhere along the line deadly force will be needed. I just rather it be judged by someone who is trained to prolong that line as far as it gets....
Of course the police cannot be everwhere everytime. But somewhere you have to draw the line. And I think its a good place to draw it on immidiate danger to my own life... Or someone elses... Shooting somebody for violating my privacy is NOT that line...