Gun Control, for or against? (Page 3)

I grew up with guns in my house; we had everything from shotguns, pistols, hunting rifles and even a WWII era sniper rifle. The guns were kept on a shelf down in our basement and it was a simple matter to walk over and pick the one you wanted and the ammo for them was sitting on the same shelf. Not once in my life did I try to "sneak" a gun out of the house. If my dad even thought that I had been messing with his guns, I wouldve got my kicked. I was taught at a very early age that guns were a tool and never point them at something I didnt want to shoot. When I was an adult, I enlisted in the Army so for the past 10 years I've had a profession that allows me to use various types of guns. I've been to all kinds of schools that teach you how to shoot. Between the time I was a kid and now, I've probably fired over 100,000 rounds of ammo. In fact, I enjoy shooting. With all of that being said though, I dont own a gun. If I ever own a gun, it'll be one that someone gives me. There is no need for me to own one. IMO a gun gives an untrained person a false sense of security. It takes a huge commitment for a person to learn to react instictively with firearm. Just because you know how to load, aim and pull a trigger dosent mean you can defend yourself with a gun. There is a huge difference between shooting at paper targets and a real person.

Earlier this summer my son was given a cap gun as a gift by someone. I wasn't to happy about it, but I let him have it. The first few times he played with it I watched him, and as soon as he pointed it at someone, it gotten taken away and we had a long talk. Gun safety starts in the home. IMO it's the parents fault that those kids did what they did. Let's not talk about gun control, lets talk about parental control.

For all of you in favor of gun control, here is an article you should read:

ON SHEEP, WOLVES, AND SHEEPDOGS
By LTC(RET) Dave Grossman, RANGER,
Ph.D., author of "On Killing."

"Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always, even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for?"

- William J. Bennett
- in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997


One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me, it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell.

Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, And someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful. For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial. The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports, in camouflage fatigues, holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa." Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed, right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: Slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.


"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men."

- Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church. They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs. Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them. Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones were attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up. Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear, helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling." Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level. And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes.

If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself..."Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other.

Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

jase714 if it were up to me you would get credit for a dozen post after that last novel you posted. Good stuff though, real good stuff.
I'm usually left of middle on most issues except Gun Control. I own a lot of guns. I like having them around. They are my friends. I sometimes buy them just for the hell of it.
You gotta problem with that?

Nice article. I've read his book before, and found it to be quite interesting.

Again - I'm only talking about what my policy is here for my house.  What you do with your family is fine with me.  With that thought, consider this.  When is the last time a parent of a young child actually predicted what their children's behavior would be like as they went throught their pre teen and teenage years?  Add to that friends that you don't know about now and may not know about even when they have them. 

Personally, I feel no need to have a gun in my home to protect myself so I see no need to increase the danger to my family and others by having one.  Sure, if I do everything you suggest you could make an argument that the danger is only increased by having one by a fraction of a percentage point - my point is that it is still increased and I'm not going there.

Like I said, whatever everyone else does with their own family is their business.  I really don't care.  That's why I put the caveat of "limited scope" in my OP.  As a side note, I am very familiar with guns, learned about them and shot them as a kid and I used to own a nice .357 I took to the range to shoot.  When I got married and started having kids I quit skydiving too.  It significantly reduced my chances of dying while skydiving. 

Edited by hangloose 2006-10-11 7:44 AM

 HAHA...ok...take your keypad, your loud noise, the cops response time, and your ferocious dog against an armed burgler.

 Survey after survey have been conducted in prisons and of criminals...their biggest fear and the biggest deterent. The possibility that the owner is armed.

Edited by Tri'nNC 2006-10-11 10:09 AM

Well ....actually it would. If you look at the recent states and the passing of concealed carry laws. The numbers of citizens carrying legally is increasing but is still very limited. Now I don't know if you're a poker player or a mathematician, but now we're talking odds. Yes the odds of a citizen being armed are lower....but lets take the choice made between two houses. House A...vehicle with an NRA sticker on the back of it, or House B....vehicle with a PETA sticker on the back of it. Hmmm...which one to choose? still not a deterrent?!?

 The gun is about protecting my life and the lives of my family, not my property when i'm not home.

Edited by Tri'nNC 2006-10-11 10:27 AM

I think the other issue here is the professional burglars vs. those who are stealing to (most likely) fuel a habit of some sort.

A professional will conduct recon and surveillance on his target. He will establish patterns of the comings and going of the occupants. He will hit a "soft" target where he knows he can get in and out easily, with minimal chance of getting caught. Why? Because that's the way to remain a thief, and not a prisoner.

Petty thieves, or those who are not professionals, look for the smash and grab, generally speaking. Muggers are like that, junkies are like that. These are people who break in regardless of the situation. The place looks empty, let's hit it. Either way, I doubt that many people are going to wake up with a gun pointed at them by a thief. Kidnapper or killer, yes, but not a thief.

The argument of home defense is a weak one in terms of crime prevention. The fact remains, though, that it is a constitutional guarantee, and it will be impossible to remove that. There are going to be guns in this country. Learn to live with it.

There are certain arguements taht keep creeping up in this debate that I feel I must address. The first is this notion that "we don't need gun laws we need to enforce the laws we already have." If some one could tell me the laws that aren't being enforced, please? In fact I dare you. I'm a prosecutor in Florida, and if anything the laws pertaining to the illegal use of guns have gotten stronger and they are being enforced vigorously. We have mandatory 10/20 Life law, use a gun in th commission of a crime mandatory 10 years prison, fire the gun mandatory 20 years, kill or injure someone mandatory Life. And in Florida that's day-for-day time, no early out. Possession of firearms by convicted felons also carries minimum manditory prison sentences. Possession of illegaly obtained firearms or firearms with altered serial numbers are also felonies in Fla.

This notion that a handgun is a deterent to crime. Especially burgalries, I can only speak from what I've seen and I haven't seen any evidence of the deterent effect of owning a gun. Like I said previously most burglaries occurr when the home owner is away. In fact I have seen numerous examples of burglars specifically targeting homes with guns to burglarize when the home owner isn't home with the sole intent of stealing the gun.

These types of arguements seem to me to be an appeal to emotions and fears.

Is the PETA house going to have anything worth stealing though? I mean come on.

Just a few stats....

 According to the 1997 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those possessing a gun, the source of the gun was from -

• a flea market or gun show for fewer than 2%
• a retail store or pawnshop for about 12%
• family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source for 80%

source: Bureau for Justice http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Homicide/Homicide.cfm

Opinion of a female journalist....

The decision to arm was easy for me. While I haven’t grown up with guns or spent Saturday afternoons shooting skeet like my grandpa, gun ownership just makes sense to me. If I have the option, of course I’m going to choose to defend myself, not stand by and become a victim of a crime. I hope I will never need to shoot someone. But, as I learned in June at Front Sight, a firearms training institute outside of Las Vegas, I would much rather have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it.

Gun opponents argue that there are other methods of self-defense. I agree. I hope to return to Front Sight to take their empty-hand defense course someday. Yet, no matter how skilled I aspire to be in martial arts, I know that if I’m pitted against an attacker who is bigger and stronger than me, I don’t stand a chance.

I’ve done some research and found that other methods of self-defense are also inadequate. Victims armed with knives are six times more likely to be injured in an attack than victims armed with guns and twice as likely to be injured than victims who do not resist. Stun guns require three seconds of close contact with an attacker to distribute the electrical charge, and the Mace we buy is diluted and virtually useless against an attacker, especially one who is drunk or on narcotics. That leaves me with guns as my first — and only — choice of self-defense weapons.

source: http://www.kansan.com/stories/2005/sep/01/armed_defend/

My question to the woman of BT: You forget that you need something from the store for your kids bday party at school, so you decide to run down the street to the store at 10:45p just before jumping in bed. You go in come out and have what you need. You leave the store and don't notice the two grown males that follow you out to your car. You're forced into your car and told to drive. Your led to somewhat secluded area, while the whole way they are taunting you and graphically detailing what they will do to you. You arrive at a location...they proceed to rape you. And as they let you run a short distance trying to get away, you're shot multiple times in the back.

 A case very similar to this happened where I grew up just a few years ago, in broad daylight from a grocery store. The girl in her early 20's begged for them not to kill her as they forced her to drive, raped her, and shot her as she proceeded to escape.

Ladies...how do you want to protect yourselves?

to the Men....you can't be with your mom, sister, wife, daughter all of the time. How would you want them to handle the situation? defend themselves?

Would you want to be educated and have the tools to use them if needed or just not have them b/c you didn't want to take the time to learn the proper use, care, and handling?  

 Yes, guns are not the end all be all of protection. But in other areas, we educate ourselves to prevent being injured by electricity in our homes but we don't just go without because we could be hurt by it. 

A very interesting point for those who have not read "Freakonomics"...

Should we outlaw backyard swimming pools? Why not?

The problem is that they are often scared of the wrong things. It's not their fault, really. Separating facts from rumors is always hard work, especially for a busy parent. And the white noise generated by the experts-to say nothing of the pressure exerted by fellow parents- is so overwhelming that they can barely think for themselves. The facts they do manage to glean have usually been varnished or exaggerated or otherwise taken out of context to serve an agenda that isn't their own.

Consider the parents of an eight-year-old girl named, say, Molly. Her two best friends, Amy and Imani, each live nearby. Molly's parents know that Amy's parents keep a gun in their house, so they have forbidden Molly to play there. Instead, Molly spends a lot of time at Imani's house, which has a swimming pool in the backyard. Molly's parents feel good about having made such a smart choice to protect their daughter.

But according to the data, their choice isn't smart at all. In a given year, there is one drowning of a child for every 11,000 residential pools in the United States. (In a country with 6 million pools, this means that roughly 550 children under the age of ten drown each year.) Meanwhile, there is 1 child killed by a gun for every 1 millionplus guns. (In a country with an estimated 200 million guns, this means that roughly 175 children under ten die each year from guns.) The likelihood of death by pool (1 in 11,000) versus death by gun (1 in 1 million-plus) isn't even close: Molly is roughly 100 times more likely to die in a swimming accident at Imani's house than in gunplay at Amy's.

source: http://www.freakonomics.com/ch5.php

 These issues should be the citizen's choice. If you don't want guns in your house, thats fine. But don't deny me the right to protect my family in the way I see fit.

Cheers.

Edited by Tri'nNC 2006-10-11 11:10 AM

Ryan:

If the issue you're arguing is truely based upon a Constitutional Right to posses firearms, and you're bottom line arguement is "It's a personal choice..." then why the scare tactics.

Why does the anti-gun control side consistently resort to this description of horrible crimes. I find the arguement weak as oppossed to a Constitutional arguement. The scare tactic assumes several things taht I don't believe are accurate; first it assumes that these horror stories are the rule rather than the exception. (In my experience, these types of crimes that are continually pointed at as a reason to carry a gun are very rare, they do occurr and when they do they are high profile, but they are still rare) Second, the horror story arguement assumes that a gun would have made a difference in the success or failure of the crime. It's an assumption that is difficult to make either way.

I can tell you that the only insident of a homeowner using a gun while his house was being broken into while I've been in the office resulted in the homeowner being charged. The homeowner felt his house was being broken into (It wasn't three kids were knocking on windows in the neighborhood and waking homeowners up and running away) The home owner heard knocking on his window, grabbed his gun, ran outside onto his front porch, saw two people run from the side of his house down the road, he yelled "freeze", then fired three shots down the road. One kid was hit in the side, and lived. The other was hit in the back of the thigh and lost his leg.

In 99% of situations common sense is going to be a better bet to save you than a gun. If you feel uneasy about someone following you, trust your gut. If someone wants my DVD player, its replaceable. Its not worth my life to bet that I'm faster on the draw than the other guy. In the 1% of cases where someone is determined to harm you I'd bet that there's not much you can do to stop them, even with a gun. ASA made some great points. Just anecdotally I'd say that most gun crimes are spur of the moment (ASA?). It is a weapon of ease. Maybe the answer is to go back to the times when the constitution was written and only allow muzzle loaders.

Well all I can say is that I live with crime on a daily basis, I work with it. I've seen more of it than most people ever will with the exception of police. I've seen the devistating effects of violent crime on the human body and on the human emotion. I've been to autopsies, I've been to crime scenes. I've seen corpses littering a highway. I've seen the insides of a human on the outside of their body because of blunt force trauma, gun shot wounds, stabbings, baseball bats, and cars.

And given all of this i still don't own a gun. I would submitt that "fear" based upon the horror stories that you have used as examples isn't in fact healthy.

Oh, and I have insurance on my house to protect against hurricanes because I am far more likely to suffer hurricane damage to my house than being the victim of a violent crime. Fear of hurricanes is "healthy fear".

Are you wrong about why criminals are detered by police presence? I don't know it would take making some leaps in thought. If you're asking my oppinion I'd say "yes you are wrong" Criminals don't fear the police because they have guns, at least on a primary level, it may be a factor. But I would assume that it's the "presence" of the police and the assumption by the criminal that a police presence means a greater likelihood of being caught. Not a greater likelhood of being shot!

I can buy a Constitutional arguement against gun control. The " I own guns because I have a Constitutional right" I find persuasive and hard to argue with. But the Chicken Little/sky is falling arguement based upon horror stories of crime I don't find the least bit compelling. Especially given my experience with crime.