The Big Gun Control Thread

Whew boy - I just started looking into that one and that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Seems Donohue's synopsis on Lott's synopsis has also been called into question, and then congress decided that none of it matters. Meanwhile, FBI data still shows downward trends. So who knows.

Donohue debunked Lott, Lott debunked Donohue, some congressional committee independantly debunked both of them,

Critic Ted Goertzel considered use of econometrics to establish causal relationships by Lott (and by Lott's critics Levitt, Ayres and Donohue) to be "fundamentally flawed" junk science.[53] The National Academy of Sciences panel that reported on several gun control issues in 2004 looked at Right-To-Carry laws in Chapter 6 and endorsed neither the Lott & Mustard (1997) level and trend models as definite proof nor the Ayres & Donohue (2003) hybrid model as definite refutation of Lott's thesis: the majority of panel concluded that econometrics could not decide the issue, suggesting instead alternate research, such as a survey of felons to determine if RTC changed their behavior.

and more - the debate is still ongoing.

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Lott_v...

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/postsbyd...

Here - I'll just tell it to you straight - here's where I come from, this isn't strictly academia to me.

I shoot IDPA, IPSC (competition), - deer, pigs and bear.

I grew up on a farm, and more often than not, if we ate meat, it was something I'd hunted myself, or my dad and I together, or later my son and I together.

I got my first gun at around age 4, and gave it to my son when I was 34.

I've carried concealed for 20 years, and I've never pulled a weapon on anyone in that time, and I don't see them as anything mystical or empowering - just a tool, sort of like a set of car-keys. I've competed in sporting pistol matches since 1997.

I was a boy scout, and I believe in be prepared - and not just for the oft-mentioned "trouble" - but in general. Cars break down, folks are stranded, and any tool is a good tool. It's also a right, one I believe in. I am a benefactor member of the NRA.

When I used to compete regularly, I used to shoot sometimes 500 - 1000 rds/day at the range. I enjoy it immensely. There's a lot of skill, math, and general challenge/conditioning to marksmanship, and I find it to be a wonderful hobby. One I wish my son shared more of an interest in.

I strongly and firmly believe that owning a gun is a responsibility. I don't drink - ever. I've no use for alcohol, drugs, or partying. I firmly believe that if you are going to own a firearm, you should practice with it, to the point that it's muscle memory, and then instinct. If you're not going to spend the time learning to use a tool - then yes, just like any other tool it can be as much harm as good in untrained hands. But so can a set of bagpipes - let me tell y'all what.

This may be another one we're just going to have to agree to disagree on - and that's fine.

I enjoy shooting and the shooting sports, and have all my life - and I view it as fundamental to "what is American" to me, as Baseball and apple pie. It's just part of the America that I grew up in, and am proud to call home.

Now, as to crime and criminals and thugs who pervert the law and abuse firearms, or any other weapon, to commit crime - I have absolutely no use for them as part of society whatsoever. I see a lot of the problem with crime - as being regardless of the weapon or tool used, and no amount of legislation dealing with the tools criminals use is addressing the underlying cause.

Col. Jeff Cooper (USMC Ret.) said it thusly: "If you take all the guns off the street you still will have a crime problem, whereas if you take the criminals off the street you cannot have a gun problem."

I stand by Col. Cooper - get the criminals off the streets and the crime will go away.

And other good quotes if you care to review:

http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/rkba/C...

alexicacon wrote:

And finally: Even more specifically:

the pro-gun side always says that if the government takes away their guns that people will just stab each other and yet that simply isn't the case in a country where handguns have been banned.

Incorrect.

It most assuredly *IS* the case - as evidenced by years of trend analysis following the UK's 1997 gun ban.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/uk...

http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=1323

...snip

Again, you are just flat out wrong. Why don't you take a look at the source study quoted in The Times article.

Let's look at the numbers. If your premise is correct, then the UK should have seen a massive spike in violent crime after 1997 because guns were the only thing keeping all those savages at bay. But if you go to page 15 of the study you'll see that in 1997 there were 3,593,000 violent crimes in the UK, 216,000 of which involved a knife and in 2006/2007 there were 2,471,000 violent crimes, 198,000 of which involved a knife. So right there we have a problem with your premise. Violent crime actually decreased about 31% during the time period, which calls your basic premise into severe question, while the percentage of total violent crime involving knives went up 2%.

The stats you quoted also obscured the extent of "knife crime" in the UK. See, as reported by The Telegraph, according to the British Crime Survey, one of the two major sources for all crime data:

The BCS suggests the number of violent incidents involving knives in 2005/2006 was, at 169,000, around half the level of 340,000 in 1995, though it had increased on 2004 - 2005 and had been rising since the previous year The proportion of overall violent incidents involving knives was eight per cent in 1995 and seven per cent in 2005 - 2006.
BCS findings also suggest that the use of knives in woundings, common assaults and robberies followed similar patterns - significant falls on 1995 but an upwards trend since 2003. Homicides involving "sharp instruments" - knives and bottles - have fallen since 1995 as a proportion of overall killings. There were 236 in 2004 - 2005.

So, just to recap, I said that the UK didn't turn to knives after the handgun ban and you said that they did. The stats say that not only did violent crime go down after guns were outlawed (exactly opposite of what you claimed), but that so did violent crimes involving knives. And the UK government's own stats say that fewer knives are involved in crimes now than were in the years before the handgun ban.

alexicacon wrote:

There are reams of documentation detailing exactly the point that if guns are taken away, crime rates go up, dramatically.

Where is it? Seriously. As the stuff I linked to above showed, violent crime went down in the UK after they banned handguns...and knives weren't really used all that much more.

alexicacon wrote:

Whew boy - I just started looking into that one and that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Seems Donohue's synopsis on Lott's synopsis has also been called into question, and then congress decided that none of it matters. Meanwhile, FBI data still shows downward trends. So who knows.

But all that discussion and arguing about those studies matters. See, right now you believe that "there's an *inverse* correlation between gun ownership and crime rates" and yet have absolutely no hard proof of that belief outside of the FBI's general crime stats that say crime has been declining for nearly two decades. Unless you can prove there's connection between gun ownership and that drop in crime and that gun ownership and permissive carry is responsible for the majority of it then all you are doing is going from your gut and it was clear from your pictures that you loves your guns.

I don't want policy decisions made on gut feelings. I want them made on actual data. And right now the data says that guns don't reduce crime and don't make people safer.

I get that you like firearms and have a long history with them, but what you fail to grasp is that not everyone treats guns like you do. They buy one to feel safe, don't get any training, and just toss it loaded into a drawer until their kid finds it or they have a fight with the SO, get drunk or high, and decide to "teach her a lesson". Not everyone who shoots someone was a criminal before they pulled the trigger. That's why the circumstances for 3,500+ homicides involving guns fall in the mundane category of "arguments", typically over stupid sh*t.

Guns are also used in hundreds of thousands of crimes every year. We know that. All we have to say that guns prevent crimes is a single telephone survey of 5,000 people done nearly 20 years ago. So, again, until you can prove that guns stop crimes don't ask public policies decisions to be made based on the myth that guns prevent millions of crimes each year.

And also accept that every time you follow the directives of the NRA and push against closing the loopholes in gun laws, making it harder for the BATF to keep watch over the tens of thousands of dealers, foil every attempt at national databases, and more you are actually making it easier for criminals to get guns. As was pointed out earlier in this thread and backed by the recent Washington Post story, criminals buy their guns from gun stores just like you (and steal them from the idiots who don't lock their guns up).

Either way, nothing you wrote about your relationship with firearms has anything remotely to do with the wording of the 2nd Amendment. I get that you compete and hunt and have great memories about firearms, but that's a lifestyle choice and has nothing at all to do with well-regulated militias.

And don't forget that you can make it easier to track guns, add waiting periods, etc.--that is to say, legislate gun control (not forbid gun ownership), and for a dedicated gun owner these will still only be minor hassles compared to their enjoyment of the hobby. For a criminal, things get tougher, because it's easier to track down gun dealers who are playing fast and loose with the rules and shut them down.

Even more, for the tracking stuff: if you make it easier to collect data, then future legislation can actually be smarter and more effective while being less intrusive to law-abiding gun owners. If there are good detailed records about what's going on, then you can actually figure out where the real problems are, and legislate in ways that interfere with criminals more and gun-lovers less. If you don't have good detailed records, then you are forced to use broader gestures because you don't know where the problems are. Even worse, it's more difficult to keep track of what the actual effectiveness of the legislation was. If you have more detailed information, then if a law is passed that makes things less convenient for gun lovers and has no measurable impact on criminals, the gun lovers can easily lobby for that law to be withdrawn--using real facts.

Short form: If you want responsible gun legislation, the smart thing to do would be to first support bills and policies that improve record-keeping. Then, support bills and policies that allow the effective punishment of dealers that play fast and loose with the law. Those are things you can do that should have no impact at all on any law-abiding citizen, and will have a tremendous impact on our ability to enforce existing laws and measure the effectiveness of those laws.

Then you can look at the *data* and see if it suggests any new rules that will have minimal impact on law-abiding folks and maximum impact on criminals, and things actually get *better*.

I think the data bears out the reasoning.

I think, alexicacon, that you are mistaken with respect to guns and crime because while you own a gun, you are not a criminal and do not have proper insight into criminal activity. I am not a criminal myself, but I have lived in a very crime-ridden area and I have first-hand contact with criminals and their goings-on from work.

The thinking that guns lower crime comes from the thinking that carrying a gun will discourage criminals from committing the crime. This is not true. When you conceal-carry, the criminal does not know you have a gun. In areas where conceal-carry is common enough to consider, the criminals simply escalate appropriately, using guns and gun tactics themselves - fire first, ask later. The end result is that the minority of people who conceal carry make the area markedly more dangerous for everyone, including people who don't carry firearms.

The other thinking may be that you can use a firearm to defend yourself from criminals if threatened. In the majority of instances involving crime, this is a bad idea. Firstly, you do not want to confront or resist criminal threats. Doing so escalates force, which obligates the criminal to do likewise. Even the sight of a gun the criminal did not see beforehand can cause him to do something you will both regret. Secondly, having the option to resist often moves people to consider that option when they really ought to be running or calling for help. Thirdly, having a gun or bringing a gun to a crime scene can confuse law enforcement about who is who, especially in the case of an open firefight with multiple civilians holding firearms. Lastly, having a gun means that the criminal can take it from you.

I used to live in an area dominated by gangs and gang violence. Some of my family were involved with the gangs. They, themselves do not carry firearms as a matter of course. This is because carrying firearms unnecessarily escalates the lethality of random violence. You have two guys from rival gangs drinking, they insult each other accidentally, and suddenly you have a gang war that nobody wants. If they had fists, they might have come to their senses after a short fight, and even knife injuries aren't all that fatal when your attacker can't stab properly because he's too far gone to aim.

Short version: my impression is that you have an overly romantic view of what carrying a gun accomplishes, because you're not a criminal and have no extensive experience of criminal gun activity from the other perspective.

alexicacon wrote:

Whew boy - I just started looking into that one and that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Seems Donohue's synopsis on Lott's synopsis has also been called into question, and then congress decided that none of it matters. Meanwhile, FBI data still shows downward trends. So who knows.

Donohue debunked Lott, Lott debunked Donohue, some congressional committee independantly debunked both of them,

Critic Ted Goertzel considered use of econometrics to establish causal relationships by Lott (and by Lott's critics Levitt, Ayres and Donohue) to be "fundamentally flawed" junk science.[53] The National Academy of Sciences panel that reported on several gun control issues in 2004 looked at Right-To-Carry laws in Chapter 6 and endorsed neither the Lott & Mustard (1997) level and trend models as definite proof nor the Ayres & Donohue (2003) hybrid model as definite refutation of Lott's thesis: the majority of panel concluded that econometrics could not decide the issue, suggesting instead alternate research, such as a survey of felons to determine if RTC changed their behavior.

Goertzel's critique there is actually a bigger problem for Lott than Donohue, though.

Lott argues there's a causal relationship (or at least, a very strong inverse correlation) between gun ownership and gun violence. The 2002 paper by Ayres and Donohue says that relationship doesn't exist. Goertzel says econometrics is bunk and nobody should believe anything that uses that as part of its methodology. That leaves Lott back at square one in terms of trying to prove his thesis.

The FBI statistics show a long-term downward trend in crime since 1991. The US has, at the same time, undergone a demographic shift. The Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook estimates that the median age in the US has reached its highest point ever at 36.7 years. This is up from 35.3 years in 2000 and 32.9 years in 1990, according to census figures. Crime (especially violent crime) tends to be more often committed by younger people. There are other likely factors in play - my point is that it's more complex than the "crime is down, more guns have been bought, therefore more guns equals less crime" conclusion you seem to be drawing here.

In addition to the review OG Slinger posted above about the UK, if the inverse correlation was as strong a factor as you argue, it would make sense that violent crime would drop in areas that had more permissive gun laws, and remain the same (or go up) in places that had more restrictive gun laws. That's not in fact what the FBI data shows. Violent crime is down, even in places like New York City, which has extremely restrictive gun laws.

Firstly, you do not want to confront or resist criminal threat

This is what the media and government has been preaching to people to years to turn them into passive, easy marks. And it's AWFUL.

It is absolutely assinine on it's face as far as I'm concerned.

I was a psychology major - where learn all about behavioral psychology and reinforcement. For every time a criminal (or a dog, cat, rat or even a fish for that matter) commits an act, and receives a reward, or a prize - even in the form of an endorphin rush if nothing else, for committing a crime and not being resisted - getting something for his trivial effort, and getting away - it's a positive reinforcer to the criminal to continue committing those acts. And they get bolder, and they get wiser, and the criminal becomes more dangerous and more strongly positively reinforced to commit those actions - for every time someone does not stand up for themselves and just lets the criminal get away with it.

It's like the rat who pushes a button to get a nugget of rat-chow.

I'll listen to some of the rest of your points - and I've read them, and acknowledge you the other things you mentioned. But don't make this point, and please don't buy into that mentality - this point here represents an idea and a philosophy that is fundamentally flawed and in my opinion a horrible thing to do. If people want crime to go down - then stand up to those committing it, don't just passively give in to it.

Guys, we just see differently on this one. I'm stubborn and set in my ways and my camp I suppose, and I'm guessing so are those of you replying. I'm ok with that. I value you guys as friends more than I do making a point, and it's clear you all have your opinion, just as I have mine.

I'm genuinely shaken and saddened by the comment not to stand up for your own safety. If you don't - who will? The police cannot be relied on to protect anyone - they're not omnipresent. So that leaves trusting your safety to the nice man who just broke into your home or is mugging you on the street. Even if they don't kill someone today, as they get reinforced and bolder - they may kill someone down the road due to a long history of non-resistance.

And to one poster I think mentioning a difference in mentality and philosophy - it's true I grew up in an area with almost no crime. People worked, helped one another out, went to church on Sundays, and took care of their kids. I worked in a pea-field every summer from sun-up till sun-down growing up, (corn and watermelons too), and lived on a farm. As did everyone I knew. We all had guns, and they really weren't that big of a deal. We didn't have money to go to the store, so most of what we ate, we either grew it or shot it ourselves. Aside from the occasional cow or pig we took to the market. That was life for me. I acknowledge some of you had different experiences growing up and we're viewing the situation from different angles.

Maybe we didn't have much of a crime rate because we were all so poor criminals in the area knew there wasn't anything to take. We did have a chainsaw stolen one year. And when the guy tried to pawn it at the western auto downtown, the store owner recognized the chainsaw as my grandfathers and called him to come get it back while the guy was standing there at the counter.

alexicacon wrote:

And to one poster I think mentioning a difference in mentality and philosophy - it's true I grew up in an area with almost no crime.

alexicacon wrote:

This is what the media and government has been preaching to people to years to turn them into passive, easy marks. And it's AWFUL.

Sir? Don't ever move to a big city with that attitude.
You're treating this as if every person robbing you is doing it for the first time and only for the rush. That they could be rehabilitated by a grandmother saying "No!" You seem to have no way to appreciate the level of detachment and absolute desperation that can possess a fellow human being for no other reason than being hungry and too proud to beg.
You really want your daughter to resist a man with a knife? Your wife? Make it two men, one of them behind her, unseen in the shadows. Your stance is that she should resist and 'teach' those muggers that she isn't an easy mark? Your stance will get her beaten and most likely killed simply for the contents of her purse.
The 'asinine' attitude takes the stance that your life and well-being are more important than needlessly endangering yourself and others by escalating a situation. You think giving a mugger grief will teach him the error of his ways and go straight? No, you're teaching him that he needs to step up his game and just lead with the gun, work with a partner, and hit first. Can't draw a pistol if there's a cocked nine on the back of your neck, sucka. And now he has your money and your nice, legal, well-maintained gun. Thanks for doing your part.
I had the benefit of growing up on a farm. I have also had the benefit of living in a small town too close to the meth problem. I then had the benefit of living in a cheap apartment complex minutes away from downtown Omaha. You can't take small-town logic into big-city crime. As nice as it would be, you cannot. The criminals you face don't share your context.

alexicacon:

I'm not a psychology major, so I don't know how the psychology applies, but I have had contact with pickpockets, gang members, and real assassins (on the lower end of the budget, of course). They're not super-high profile, but they are ex-military and carry out assignments competently enough (or so I've heard).

The government says not to resist because it's sound advice. You'll hear the same from any self-defense expert. The first and only thing you want to do when you are not in a situation of advantage is to get away from it as fast as humanly possible. If you are obliged to fight to create a situation in which to get away, then you fight; but only for that reason, and you run away as fast as you can ASAP. This is not a psychology-based reasoning but strategic and tactical reasoning. You do not engage your enemy when you are off-balance and at a disadvantage. You engage when you are at advantage.

Advising people to resist armed criminals not only increases the incidence of violent encounters - it turns pickpockets into murderers and muggers into assassins. If they feel that you're probably going to resist and they're armed with lethal force, they're going to kill you first and get the goods later. The only reason criminals use force for the purpose of threatening is because it works. Convenient for them, convenient for you - possible charges are less severe. If it stops working, they're going to start using it for something else - something that works.

I think you're overly romanticizing the attractions of a criminal existence. These guys aren't mugging people in preference to some six figure job they turned down last week. People only perform criminal activity because they feel that they have no better option. They really don't have any, or they're too uneducated or beaten down to see it. In rare cases, people become criminals because they're naturally violent or larcenous by personality, but you don't want those people pointing a gun at your head with a good reason to pull the trigger. They don't need the added incentive to be criminals. It's the violence itself or the robbery that attracts them.

alexicacon wrote:

I'm genuinely shaken and saddened by the comment not to stand up for your own safety. If you don't - who will? The police cannot be relied on to protect anyone - they're not omnipresent. So that leaves trusting your safety to the nice man who just broke into your home or is mugging you on the street. Even if they don't kill someone today, as they get reinforced and bolder - they may kill someone down the road due to a long history of non-resistance.

Hm.

This perspective sounds really, really weird to me. I think that the first point that must be made is that criminals are people, too. I'm not saying that for us to sympathize with them but to empathize with them - put ourselves in their shoes as much as we can. They're not aliens. They startle, they panic, they generally take the lowest lying fruit, and all that.

Prioritizing safety often means NOT to "stand up" to criminal elements. If there's a robber in your house, you barricade your bedroom door and let him take whatever the hell he wants outside of it. Time enough to track him down and nail him in the morning. Fresh off the bed with inferior tactical positioning and sight is not how you want to deal with this.

Ideally, you should have an exit to the outside from every room in the house, preferably exiting into a covered or concealed position from which you can survey the scene. In a city, exiting to a rooftop with access to the opposite street is best - you can even evade small-time assassins that way. If the thief seems to be looking for you, or advancing on you, he's not a thief, he's trying to kill you. Get the hell out.

Finally, thieves who do not have a history of encountering violence tend not to be experienced or prepared for it. The less resistance they encounter, the more superfluous a gun appears from their perspective. Eventually, they may not even bother loading it. After all, a loaded gun is a dangerous thing. If you never fire it, why bother buying bullets?

Sensible (not insane or stupid) criminals who get lots of money eventually stop doing criminal activity personally. They either get a gang and stop taking the risks themselves, or go legit and do something boring - like opening a hardware store.

Short version: The reason a mugger mugs you isn't because you don't have a gun. It's because he's a mugger. If you have a gun, you close off any possibility of his using a gun to threaten you, but that doesn't preclude his just capping you straight off.

I WAS a psych major, and while alexicacon's assessment is true on a base level, the conclusions he draws from it, namely that victims should resist crime, are grossly invalid for a number of reasons. Namely, the VAST majority of criminals don't commit crime for positive reinforcement, but instead because of a number of social and economic factors that leave them feeling as though they have no other choice BUT to commit crime. This isn't to say that positive reinforcement doesn't feed a criminal's sense of security in his lifestyle, but crime will happen regardless. It's better not to resist because not cooperating greatly INCREASES the chance of harm to the victim.

Yeah, I'm not entirely willing to enter the discussion on gun rights, but about victims resisting crime, I have read a lot and heard a lot of people from the martial arts community that resisting say, a mugging, is a good way to get yourself killed. I think ruhk is spot on; violent crimes committed purely for the sake of violence are a minority. The majority of crimes are committed simply for economic reasons. You'll hear a lot of martial arts experts who say that the best way to avoid a fatal confrontation is to de-escalate the situation. Whether having a gun in those situations for which violence is the main motivation is useful or not is a different question.

ruhk wrote:

I WAS a psych major, and while alexicacon's assessment is true on a base level, the conclusions he draws from it, namely that victims should resist crime, are grossly invalid for a number of reasons. Namely, the VAST majority of criminals don't commit crime for positive reinforcement, but instead because of a number of social and economic factors that leave them feeling as though they have no other choice BUT to commit crime. This isn't to say that positive reinforcement doesn't feed a criminal's sense of security in his lifestyle, but crime will happen regardless. It's better not to resist because not cooperating greatly INCREASES the chance of harm to the victim.

Something interesting jarred in my brain with this comment.

Beginner criminals and small-timers are generally people who are not hardened and have no real experience with the criminal lifestyle. A resisting victim can make them panic and seriously injure or kill a victim they had no intention of harming. When this happens, the criminal gets worse, not better. Either he's captured and does time (and then he's done for - he's a criminal for life), or he isn't captured and he get inured to killing people. Lose-lose for us.

About the best case that could happen is that he gets beaten off and he learns to escalate his initial threat or violence level.

Bear wrote:

Talking sense.

That pretty much sums up my stance as well. Well said!

I just want to make one thing perfectly clear, I'm not advocating that we ban or confiscate guns. What I want is a society where the guns are owned by people who don't use them to rob banks or create bloodbaths in supermarket parking lots.

We keep losing sight of the goal. The goal is not to punish the legal, sane gun owners who hunt, shoot skeet or just collect. What we have to do as a nation is find a way to keep guns from being used for the massacre du jour. The NRA isn't helping the problem, I'd argue they're making it worse.

Show me how to make that happen and I'LL join the NRA.

I agree with Bear. I want people who use guns in criminal ways to be stopped from doing so. Unfortunately, by their very nature, criminals have already shown a tendency towards not following laws that are already on the books, including several pointed out above.(I'm on my phone again, so no quotes)...

As to advice from LEOs and martial arts groups etc. There is another very ugly side to that as well, those people don't and probably won't want to risk the lawsuits that could come their way as a role model or perceived subject matter expert, by telling folks to stand up to thugs in case someone got hurt and they become the target of a lawsuit. So yes, it's just easier to tell folks to be passive and hope for the best, and from a CYA legal standpoint, the safest advice.

However, from a crime standpoint, it acts as a reinforcer to someone who commits the crime. I'm not dealing with the why's of how someone starts committing crime. Simply that doing so, receiving a "treat", and escaping unharmed - as so often happens, is a positive reinforcer to repeat the action, and take more risks. Police studies have shown this.

"Lawdog", a sheriff's deputy in TX has discussed it quite a bit in his own findings dealing with years of service in various LEO positions - if you want to do a search for Lawdog's blog it's on blogspot.

Now. I also don't want you folks thinking I'm suggesting any and everyone should go buy a weapon of their choice and run around acting like a bunch of vigilante Rambo types in the face of certain danger.

That's not at all my point or desire. And frankly I'm as horrified as the next guy at the thought of folks running around half-cocked with no clue what they're doing, or how to do so effectively at the risk of their own, or others, lives. I advocate extreme training on when, how, and why to decide what level or degree of action to take.

Folks need to use and utilize a modicum of common sense and situational awareness.

The absolute best way to protect yourself is to pay attention and don't be in an area where you may run into problems in the first place.

Common sense, thinking ahead, and simply being alert are far more valuable assets than any weapon.

There have been a number of muggings in the Federal Hill district of Baltimore recently. It's an upscale, hip neighborhood that was, until the last 10 or so years a pretty run down ghetto. Areas around that neighborhood are still surrounded by public housing. Heroin and crack are still a problem in Baltimore.

I have a two friends who live down in that neighborhood. One lobbied pretty hard to get a concealed weapon permit after his car got busted into a number of times. He's a bit of a nut anyway. I shoot and shoot a lot. That said, I've never felt the need to carry a gun on my hip. The other friend is a hand to hand instructor for local police departments.

About four months ago, the hand to hand instructor managed to get himself jumped as he was exiting his house. Four teenagers. He did what he was trained to do, which was retreat back inside, bar the door and call 911. With the exception of a couple bruises, he got off pretty unscathed. His testimony got three of the four kids tossed in juve.

I discussed this with my nut friend who said that he would almost certainly have drawn on them. I tried getting him to think through the consequences of that particular course of action to little avail. Four guys have the jump on you. They are in melee range. You fumble for a gun. If you're "lucky", you get off a telling shot and have killed a teenager. More likely, they've grabbed your wrist, beaten you to a pulp, and your gun enters an underground system where it is used in a number of felonies. In the worst case scenario, the situation escalates and they stab you to death on your front porch.

I've been in a number of physical altercations in the past myself and in none of them can I think of a possible situation in which the situation would have been improved by my having a gun.

alexicacon wrote:

However, from a crime standpoint, it acts as a reinforcer to someone who commits the crime. I'm not dealing with the why's of how someone starts committing crime. Simply that doing so, receiving a "treat", and escaping unharmed - as so often happens, is a positive reinforcer to repeat the action, and take more risks. Police studies have shown this.

...and it is also completely inconsequential to the issue of how victims should react to crime. It makes no difference whether a criminal receives positive or negative reinforcement, because ultimately crime is just a byproduct of stress on a society. Even if one criminal decides it's not worth the risk to mug a guy and gives up crime, there will still be an endless stream of new people turning to crime until those socioeconomic stressors are resolved. But ultimately, that is also inconsequential to the argument. The simple fact is: if you are a victim of crime, and show resistance to the criminal, you stand a much higher chance of bodily harm or even death than someone who cooperates. This raises the question, which is more important, the chance that a criminal may be more cautious in the future, or a person's life?

I would listen to Paleocon in this situation. His advice is sage.

Bear wrote:

I just want to make one thing perfectly clear, I'm not advocating that we ban or confiscate guns. What I want is a society where the guns are owned by people who don't use them to rob banks or create bloodbaths in supermarket parking lots.

We keep losing sight of the goal. The goal is not to punish the legal, sane gun owners who hunt, shoot skeet or just collect. What we have to do as a nation is find a way to keep guns from being used for the massacre du jour. The NRA isn't helping the problem, I'd argue they're making it worse.

Show me how to make that happen and I'LL join the NRA.

But the problem is that a huge chunk of legal, sane gun owners believe any change to gun laws, anything that makes it even slightly more difficult to get a gun, is somehow punishment or persecution. I mean can anyone seriously say that allowing guns to be sold at gun shows without any sort of background check is a good thing?

I agree with wholeheartedly about the NRA, though I'd much rather see them discredited and shunned.

I read someplace recently that the average successful criminal defense proceeding for shooting a home invader is right around $10k. If you shoot and kill someone in your home (the best of possible legal situations), you're looking at shelling out $10k to avoid incarceration. Obviously, certain things will likely affect your chances of success. Your jurisdiction, the time of day, the measures you take to ensure folks are not harmed.

The state of Maryland where I reside follows an "obligation to retreat" when it comes to self defense. The idea is that you can't just gun someone down on your front lawn for threatening you. You have an obligation to retreat into your home or away from danger where possible. Should the person pursue you, you have a right to self defense, but not the right to use that in defense of property.

When I was young, dumb, and full of cum, I used to think that was asinine and encouraging of bullies. Why should I back down to someone who is trying to terrorize me after all? I'm a good, law abiding citizen. Why should I have to back down to someone making me uncomfortable? Right?

Well, part of the answer is that our society is demonstrably a better place when we do abide by those rules. I'm not at all queasy about meeting violence with violence and have been known to speak with a well placed fist from time to time, but I can't think of any possession I own that would be worth taking a life over. If for no other reason than the fact that I don't have anything in my house worth $10k.

Folks who know me know I'm a big time gun nut and ask me what they should do if someone broke into their house. They know I do IDPA shoots, have done room clearing exercises, and learned at the hand of a federal small arms instructor. They are often surprised when they hear what I have to say.

I tell them, retreat to a defensible position, train the shotgun at the single point of entry, call the cops, and announce that you have done so. If you wish, rack the shotgun once for emphasis. If they walk off with your plasma screen, that's what insurance is for.

I waffle on the clear retreat doctrine. It is rather biased, IE if you are old or a woman, the chances of you being arrested for shooting, stabbing, beating with a bat a home invader are slim. A "man" is expected to fight with his fists. It looks particularly bad for the man if he ends up beating or shooting a teenager who wanted to bust his window for a joy ride.

On the flip side, I also know as a practical matter that the middle of the night, after just waking up, hopped up on adrenaline is not the best time for me to start discharging weapons in a residence/residential area. You may correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think any state forces retreat from the home.

And Paleo, it is largely insurance companies who will benefit from these doctrines. That 10k for a defense is most likely funded by your home owner's insurance policy.

KingGorilla wrote:

I waffle on the clear retreat doctrine. It is rather biased, IE if you are old or a woman, the chances of you being arrested for shooting, stabbing, beating with a bat a home invader are slim. A "man" is expected to fight with his fists. It looks particularly bad for the man if he ends up beating or shooting a teenager who wanted to bust his window for a joy ride.

On the flip side, I also know as a practical matter that the middle of the night, after just waking up, hopped up on adrenaline is not the best time for me to start discharging weapons in a residence/residential area. You may correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think any state forces retreat from the home.

And Paleo, it is largely insurance companies who will benefit from these doctrines. That 10k for a defense is most likely funded by your home owner's insurance policy.

I am pretty sure that the obligation to retreat ends at the defensible position in your home. If you're hunting someone down in your yard, you're going to prison irrespective of whether or not someone is busting into your unattached shed to steal your snowblower. And frankly, I don't have a problem with that.

I am not sure if the obligation to retreat requires you to retreat from one room of your house to another, but having actually received training from a law enforcement small arms instructor, I can definitely tell you it is among one of the sillier ideas you can ever conjure. Do enough room clearing exercises and you come to the inevitable conclusion that doing one alone, in a dark house, with no clear shoot/no shoot protocols, when you've just woken up is a clear recipe for tragedy. You are far better off reducing the possible negative outcomes by crouching at the top of the stairs with a shotgun and cell phone. 1: Because you have clearly fulfilled your obligation to retreat. 2: because coming up the stairs at you after you have issued a verbal warning is an unmistakable aggressive act. 3: Your assailant's path is entirely predictable making a very easy sight picture to bear down on. 4: You are firing 45 degrees down toward the ground making the ground a natural berm (thus reducing your chances of endangering innocents downrange). and 5: Your assailant will have a tough enough time running at you injured. Giving him a half a flight of stairs to climb while getting hit with a load of 00 buck will usually dissuade your average misanthrope. If your defense attorney can't make a case out of that, you're black and live in Mississippi.

Nope, I agree with you there. I am more concerned the guy with a Glock or Beretta with a statistical likelihood to miss with 80 percent of his shots even as a trained shooter. Or worse, some jackass who fires a warning shot in the air or ground.

I mentioned this earlier, but there are parents in Oakland and Detroit who know all too well what happens when guns and adrenaline mix even with trained law enforcement handling them.

While I enjoy the tactical guide to clearing your house, isn't it a bit rare for burglaries to happen when people are home? I mean only 1% of households are actually burglarized and, even then, 70% of those break-ins happen during the day when most people aren't home.

OG_slinger wrote:

While I enjoy the tactical guide to clearing your house, isn't it a bit rare for burglaries to happen when people are home? I mean only 1% of households are actually burglarized and, even then, 70% of those break-ins happen during the day when most people aren't home.

Absolutely. And if a burglary is all you're preparing for, I say you're a lot better off getting an alarm system with a monthly monitoring contract. It's not a bad idea to have one anyway.

Just to clarify, I am certainly not advocating clearing your house. Even if you know what you're doing, too much can go wrong for you to do it safely and effectively. If you're concerned about a home invader, bunker and call for help. Going from room to room trying to root out an intruder is going to you killed.

The statistic about day time break ins is an important one. If it does nothing else, it should convince all of us of the importance one should place in securing firearms when not in use. If you don't have a place to bolt a quality gun safe, you really have no business owning a gun.

Oh, if you want to prevent break ins, get good deadbolts and window alarms.

The reason burglary, breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony under cover of night is relatively low in the US is, it is tough to steal things when people are at home. At night, your car is much more at risk than your home is.

You want to protect your stuff. Get to know your neighbors. Maybe the mother next door or the retiree couple across the street would be willing to poke around your house when they take a walk. Don't make it easy. This drives me up the wall when people leave their garage open. In my case, my garage contains everything one would need to quickly break into my house-sledge hammers, crow bars, ladders. So let's lock that door, and deadbolt it too.

Oh, and if you live in a neighborhood where crap like home invasions are not altogether uncommon (e.g.: where I used to live: Berwyn Heights, MD), move out of the freaking 'hood. The difference you spend in rent/mortgage will be saved in peace of mind, stress related medical bills, and possible legal bills you accrue from shooting/threatening to shoot home invaders.

Just a point of curiosity, but how does an obligation to retreat from a home invader factor in children who may be sleeping or playing in another room of the house? I've never lived in a state where there was a law on the books requiring an attempt to flee the home.

In some homes, you may see a master bedroom on the bottom floor, with the children's rooms upstairs?

As, I stated, I do not think any state currently has a statute or ruling case that requires you to flee your home. Many will punish an over-zealous pursuit or the hurting of a fleeing burglar.

In all of the cases I have read, we are talking about prosecuting people who use deadly force to protect property-say shooting someone trying to jimmy open your car.

There was a time where some states did require you to flee from your home over use deadly force.