More weapons regulations

She and all her children are probably still a lot more likely to die in a traffic accident caused by some drunken idiot. So yes I think she's being irrational. Of course I don't live in the US, so I don't know the situation there. Perhaps it's so dangerous to walk outside that you have to be armed in order to feel safe. I really don't know.

 

My wife has never carried a gun.
My mother never carried a gun.
My step-mother has never carried a gun.
My sisters have never carried a gun (except when my younger sister was in the Army, and then only in the field).
My daughter has never carried a gun.
My ex never carried a gun.

None of them have ever been robbed, assaulted, raped, or killed.

 

Maybe that's lucky for you!!

I suppose it depends where in the States you live and also where you work (as in what hours -- late night leaving convenience stores and restaurants seems to be an excellent time for dirtbags to strike).

The fact is, violent crimes DO occur -- that is a fact. How often they occur is another question, though, and it leads to this question: "is the risk of being assaulted worth the risks of carrying a weapon?" For this woman, the answer is a resounding "yes!" For all the women in T2Bruno's life, it appears that the answer is "no."

 

I was mainly commenting on the issue Tal brought up that women in the US need the gun. It is not true. My sisters and I did not lead sheltered lives and actually lived in pretty seedy areas of town at various times in our lives. We all worked in convenience stores and restaurants at all different shifts for several years of our lives. All of us believe the downside of having a weapon in the home with kids far outweighs the moderate protection such a weapon would offer.

Prevention is far better than wielding a weapon. Women would do much better for themselves learning the issues described in Gavin DeBecker's book "The Gift of Fear" than in carrying a gun. I hear far more cases in the news where a woman had her weapon taken from her, and used against her, than cases where the woman successfully drove off a potential attacker -- once again, it would have been better in either case for the woman to understand the potential risks and avoid dangerous situations by recognizing them early.

I think carrying a weapon gives too many people a false sense of security. If they are carrying a weapon they had better be willing and able to use it. Waving a weapon around may scare off minor criminals who really didn't mean any harm anyway (purse snatchers, flashers, etc.) -- but it will seriously piss off someone intent to hurt you. If the woman doesn't look like she means business, she will not survive the encounter.

 

Well considering that an average of 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime, carrying a firearm doesnt sound that paranoid does it?

But yes they do need to be trained and prepared to use it if needed.

"Oh but we have the police to protect us" you say, yeah right.
Tell that one to my friend bridger, his wife was murdered by a police officer, josh griffin.
http://www.ergogenics.org/26.html
Just so people don't get the wrong idea about her, yes she worked at a strip club, but no she wasn't a stripper.
She was the door-girl, she sat behind the counter to check ID & take the entry fee. Occasionally, once every couple of weeks at most, she would help serve drinks when the club was extremely busy.
Remember the police are NOT there to protect you. If you want specific court cases saying exactly that i can provide them for you.

 

Yes well I don't believe these numbers. And since I found them so hard to believe I looked at wikipedia where it's stated that one sixth of women report expiriencing a rape attempt or rape. Also if the definition of rape is the same as the military one which T2 defined earlier in some thread, I don't find it a least bit surprising. I don't find it to be a rational reason to carry a gun either.

 

A gun would not have helped her, martaug. Her attacker was far more proficient and obviously ready to use whatever force was necessary to get what he wanted.

I certainly do not doubt there are bad cops out there (Drew Petersen springs to mind); however, the vast majority I have known are good men and women who want to do what's right. IMO, once you get to know a cop you will have a staunch and supportive friend. Unfortunately, after dealing with the dregs of society for eight hours a day, day in and day out, police officers find it harder and harder to trust just anyone -- it takes a while to break through the protective exterior.

 

But how long does it take for the police to get somewhere? If a call goes in, it can take anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. That's PLENTY of time for a dirtbag to rape, sodomize, and murder a woman, and then steal her jewelry and go and hock it. Even if he is caught, he can use the money he got from the robbery to pay for a slick liberal lawyer to tell a sob story to the judge about how his mother never gave him enough cookies when he was 6 years old, and the stupid liberal judge will say that a perfectly reasonable excuse for any crime and release the guy to rape, sodomize, murder and rob someone else.

I firmly understand that the gun will not magically save the woman in question here 100% of the time, especially if she is untrained in its use, but I'd rather she has the option and the right to at least try to protect herself.

I believe the cops are mostly good people, but as has been mentioned by many, they cannot be everywhere at once.

Perhaps in Europe the judges and legal system are sane, but here in Canada I have heard far too many stories about criminals with criminal records longer than all of the SP population's dicks put together* who commit heinous crimes, and when the victims' families ask "why was this guy on the street?" all they get is liberal handwringing. Let me see if I can find an article about the one fellow from my lovely city, Leo Teskey. In the meantime, I'll leave it at that.

*see Death Rabbit's clues in the Quote game to understand this little joke.

EDIT: Here's the link Let me point something out:

That assault on the 2 year old? The little kid ended up with a torn penis. And this guy was walking free? Give me a break. I know having a gun maybe wouldn't have helped Dougald Miller, but I'd rather he at least have the option to have one, because maybe it might've.

 

Actually Tal there is no place I believe a woman needs to carry a weapon (except possibly in the wild -- bears are a problem in some areas). There are many places a woman (or a man for that matter) should not go alone or at night. The use of common sense is far more effective than the reliance on a weapon.

 

Ummmm, doesn't a criminal pretty much automatically have the element of surprise and thus gets to go first? A gun in your handbag isn't much use if there's one pointing at you. Even an unarmed attacker is probably going to be in a good position to stop you getting a hold of your weapon. Are there many instances of someone actually defending themselves with a gun? I'd consider myself better off knowing that my assailant doesn't have a gun than knowing that I have one that I may not be able to use.

 

Bruno it's a free country, you should never be afraid to go whereever you want.
A walk alone in the park at night?
No problem as long as you are prepared.
What you see as common sense, i see as ceding far too much of the country to the criminal element. For far too long they have been granted an open license to prey upon the non-criminal element, and if they are arrested, as LKD pointed out, they are let go with a slap on the wrist because they had a bad childhood.

Thats why Col. rex applegate walked around until with a large gold pendant about his neck even into his late 70's. It encouraged the criminal element to take a shot at an old man, at which point he usually cut them into several large pieces or shot them if the numbers were too much for a knife defense.

 

You see, today, martaug, the liberal judges I mentioned would start the hand wringing. They'd say that Col. Applegate "was looking for trouble" and that nothing the gangbangers did merited his defending himself. He'd end up with a longer prison sentence on his first trial than his attacker would on his 10th trial -- the attacker would get 15 minutes of community service and some anger counselling with a shrink (paid for with taxpayer money, but it wouldn't matter because he wouldn't show up for the counselling because he'd be too busy knocking over a liquor store.)

In today's western culture, we are supposed to roll over onto our backs and let the criminals* do whatever they want to us -- they are disadvantaged, after all, and they've had hard lives, so of course the ladies out there should let these fellows rape them and the rest of us should hand over our hard earned money to this filth.


*who are carrying illegal guns anyway, like they listen to laws, sorry, Deise, even if there is a law forbidding guns or other weapons criminals don't listen to it, and why would they when they know they won't get punished? You'll never know for sure if they do or don't have a lethal weapon.

 

Well, I suppose it's hardly universal for all but I never expect to find myself facing a criminal with a gun. Shotguns etc aren't much use for muggings and the only people with access to handguns in Ireland would be members of drug gangs or terrorists. The chances of me getting into an argument with one of those guys is slim, although not zero. I was speaking from my personal point of view there. Not that we don't have criminals of course. I could easily be mugged with a knife or iron bar or syringe. But at least I'd have a chance of running away without being shot.

I understand the psychological reassurance from having a gun but what I'm asking is how effective it is in practice. I did a google search on Rex Applegate. Amazon says he was "universally recognized as America’s foremost authority on close combat with or without weapons." He seems to have literally 'written the book' on this for the US Army and his book was used for decades. He's hardly an example of how a typical person can defend themself. If you're attacked, is it not likely that your assailant has the upper hand from the get go?

 

You will like these LKD.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2FwZVN3WiQ&feature=related
&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCezcAHXxRY&feature=related

 

This is a very good point. Rationality of needing to carry a weapon aside, if your decision is ever to carry one, for any reason, you should be educated. To do anything else is to vastly exacerbate any kind of danger you may have been in before.

It is generally accepted as fact in the psychological and sociological community that rape is the most under-reported crime of all. If 1/6 of all women report it, it is not at all unrealistic to estimate 1/4 actually have been. In my wife's Counseling of Women course, that number (1/4) was given as the official estimate.

In general, there are a wide variety of safety precautions that people (men and women) can take that are perfectly rational. When and where to walk, what company to keep where and when, how to dress, how to treat others. Among them is whether or not to carry a weapon and, if so, what kind. I will agree that all of them should be considered. I will agree that carrying a weapon should be among the last of them. I'll even say that I never, personally, intend to carry a firearm unless I'm in a really rough neighborhood. I'd probably feel more comfortable with a knife anyway. That being said, any weapon that you aren't trained in, in it's use and safety, is more dangerous to you than it is to an opponent. I think a lot of the objections that are brought up by the anti-gun crowd are actually perfectly legitimate complaints centered around a lack of education.

 

I don't think that applies. You have a right to drive a car (freedom of movement), yet you have to pass a driver's test to be allowed to. It's a "Yes, but..." situation.

Something akin to a driver's license test. Proving that you're able to safely handle a gun, have the means to keep it safe in your house (like a lockbox or something), and are psychicly stable enough to be trusted with it.

 

Fabius, my point was that the right to drive a vehicle is NOT enshrined in the Constitution -- you can move where you like but it doesn't necessarily have to be by means of a car. The right to bear arms, however, IS enshrined in said Constitution. It seems to me that classifying it as a right means that the government's ability to regulate it is weakened. That scares me, because I would like nothing better than to see mandatory courses and tests before any old yahoo can own a gun.