[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Then we agree that there's no need for gun control/banning weapons/magazines of any kind (meaning more than what is already restricted).
Glad that confusion is cleared up.

You're dismissing this point too readily. Just because I don't think crime rates would be affected by a gun ban doesn't mean that crime-related deaths or [/i]crime-related injuries[/i] would not be affected. The point here is that there are plenty of weapons that can be used in crimes instead of guns, but none of those weapons has the destructive potential of a gun. It still makes banning or strictly controlling guns worthwhile.

I know you've argued previously that knives are as bad as or worse than guns, and thus you may be inclined to disagree with that point. As you know, I completely disagree that a knife has more destructive potential than a gun. I can't think of much that would convince me otherwise. If you're still in disagreement, we may just have to agree to disagree.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Ninjitsu? No way!
Not to sidtrack too much, but which school, the Steven K. Hayes or Masaki Hatsumi school?
I ask because my GF studied under a teacher that went to Hatsumi's school.
She made 1st don.

I'm actually not sure - it was a group at my university that I joined. My guess would be that the founder (who was not a student) came from some higher-level place, but I don't know much about his background. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay with it for more than a year (and now I'm out of shape from sitting on my butt and studying all day, every day), but I really enjoyed it while I went through it.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

I don't want to be cut or shot or blugeoned thank you.
Having a gun is indended to equalize your ability to protect yourself from being assaulted/murdered.

Nobody wants to be injured. That's partly what this is all about.

You want your guns as a force equalizer, and as a way to ward off confrontations before they happen. However, simply having a gun on you isn't protection. Whether you have a gun or not, if you get shot, the injury is still the same. And if someone draws on you, it doesn't matter if your gun is at your side: you'll likely be shot before you can get it into your hands and raised to your assailant.

What if we could lessen your chances of getting shot entirely? Reducing the number of guns won't completely eliminate your chances of encountering a criminal with a gun, but it will decrease them.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

It sucks doesn't it?
The part that freaked me out was how you don't hear the report of the rounds until AFTER they hit. When my car was shot at in the Applebee's parkinglot I heard the "ding, ding, ding" before the "bang, bang, bang."
My asshole got so tight from fear I could've cut rebar with it.

That's for sure. I had no idea what was going on - my Jeep shuddered, but at first I thought that maybe someone had just smashed a bottle against the side of the vehicle. Then my wife turned around and remarked that the window was totally shattered. I calmly drove on and calculated from people's reactions that the shot must have come from one of the upper apartments, but if anyone had run into the street and taken aim at me, I might have flipped out.

I don't know what's wrong with people. Doing that is stupid, senseless destruction, but to add insult to injury, this occurred the night before Christmas Eve. We coastal dwellers generally aren't a fan of the "God and guns" mantra, but I guess it's even worse when it's "Godless and guns"

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

I asked a Weld County deputy about that today (he's a buddy).
He told me that what is missing from the conversation is the fact that the shooter's weapons are all making a flash when fired, thus giving away his position and providing an excellent target to shoot at with a considerable measure of accuracy at that range.
He of course feels he could have taken down Holmes before he switched to his pistol, though that wouldn't have saved the 10 people killed from the shotgun, but it may have reduced the injuries.

My opinion is different, I have already said that the situation was too difficult to say with any measure whether a person with a CCW could have stopped him.
It's an unknown as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not trying to say that taking Holmes out would have been impossible. There are two major factors that make it extremely unlikely, though.

The first, as I mentioned before, is that Holmes was one person among a crowd of many. If our theoretical movie-going gun carrier was sitting in the front row and thus had a clear shot, then yes, I'd say that he could have realistically been stopped. But what if the person with the gun were sitting in the middle of the theater? How about the back? The fact that it was a dark theater and that Holmes was tossing smoke canisters (or was it tear gas?) only confounds the situation: the argument that I'm making would apply even to a crowded cafe in bright daylight.

The second factor has to do with people's reactions. If we're talking about an army veteran who has seen combat, I'd find it believable that they could have seen Holmes, taken fire, and then returned fire with reasonable accuracy, all while maintaining a fairly level head. If we're talking about the average armed citizen who has never been fired on before, I'm not so certain that they would be thinking straight. They might not draw their gun at all; in a bad scenario, they would begin to fire in a panic, possibly hitting more innocent people in the crossfire. In a worst-case scenario, there would be multiple armed people firing around the theater, hitting more innocents.

One of the greatest dangers of having everyone armed is the distrust. It's easy to think that Holmes would have been put down very quickly if everyone in the theater were armed, and that would be the end of it. But how would the people holding guns know that the other armed people in the theater weren't working with Holmes? Even if everyone stopped firing once Holmes dropped dead (presuming that's how it would play out), what would happen if someone were a crappy shot and accidentally hit an innocent bystander? Wouldn't it be safer to assume that at least one of the other gun-wielding people were also acting with malicious intent?

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

I'd say he learned his mistake after he fired the shotgun into the crowd and saw the damage. Survivors have said that Holmes reloaded the shotgun during the attack.

I think he had a general priority list of weapons to use. The AR-15 was first in line, followed by the shotgun. It's not that he "learned his lesson" - the entire reason he switched to the shotgun was because the AR-15 wasn't working. If it hadn't jammed, there's a good chance that he never would have changed weapons.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

They always have been. Even when you could buy them through the mail direct from Thompson, or Browning, completely unregulated to your house.
Why they've always cost more is beyond me, but they have.
That's why banning lesser guns will not have the same effect, for whatever reason machine guns are like the rolex watches or rolls royce of guns.
It's the same reason a Fiat car is $22,000 US, and a Bentley is $195,000+ US, quality of production and demand.

The high-cost items that you're comparing to don't cost so much because of their build quality, but because of the brand name. (Otherwise, explain Ferrari and Jaguar to me )

A machine gun is a more complicated piece of machinery than a standard gun, but that alone doesn't explain the price disparity.

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

They claim they do not report those types of encounters Legem.
From the website:

We also feel that the overall number of crimes that were stopped/prevented by firearms is not fully represented on this site. Obviously crimes that were prevented by the presence of a legal firearm often go unreported (since there was no crime).

And going through the first 250 of the stories listed I found only 1 about a 14 year old that scared off an intruder with a shotgun, the police later caught the intruder. So, no there aren't any stories on there (now at 551) like what you are describing.

The point behind my statement here is to be skeptical of people who are reporting these figures. The website clearly has an agenda. It doesn't mean that they're lying or stretching the truth, but it means that they're more likely to put their own slant on things. I don't have the time to go through each of their stories to gauge their accuracy or see if they're engaging in truth-stretching.

However, this all leads away from a larger point: is the number of lives saved and/or crimes averted comparable to the number of people killed by guns?

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

It does happen in other countries. South America, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe. Much of the world is worse than the US, or did you mean only Western countries?
That answer IMHO, is because they lack the gangs we have here, and don't have the ongoing drug war we have in the US among other factors (such as government corruption like Fast & Furious).
You don't see Canada selling fully automatic weapons to Mexican drug lords do you?

I was particularly interested in the countries that either have very strict gun control laws, or that have outlawed guns entirely. We don't need to limit ourselves to Western countries, although I suppose that such comparisons would be more appropriate.

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

The gang issue is more complex. But I think US attitudes are not so static. Just consider how more and more americans are supporting gay marriage, which would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago. Many aspects of American culture are changing, whether one of those will be attitudes to guns, well time will tell.

This is a good and interesting point. There are many people who don't want society to change at all (these people are "conservative" by the very definition of the word); these are the people who will always want guns to be a part of society, because it's a part of the Bill of Rights (2nd amendment) and thus a part of what America is. Then there are the people who are willing and desire to change society to conform to more modern ways of thinking (these people are "liberal" by the definition of the word).

Ultimately, no matter how people desire to keep things static, everything changes.