Yup. I said it. Give everyone a gun. I understand that there are people who don’t want them; will never use one. There are even people who think guns are evil, that there is no reason to take a life, nothing is worth someone’s life. I disagree. My family is worth it, so is yours. I’m not advocating wild gunfights in the streets or rampaging violence. I just think everyone should have the means and opportunity to protect themselves.
I was a cop. I know how long it takes for the police to respond. I also know that there are times when you don’t have time to call 911. You do have time to protect yourself. You can say things aren’t that bad but, the news doesn’t report all the crimes that occur every day. Five hundred homicides a year is bad, but it doesn’t talk about the thousands of aggravated assaults, people shot, stabbed, beaten, raped and left where they fell.
Criminals, by definition don’t care about the law or you, your family, that you work hard to provide for your family. The legal system is being degraded to the point of uselessness. Murderers are being released without bail and often commit more aggravated assaults or murders before they go to trial for the first offense. Soros District Attorneys are offering plea deals, reduced sentence for offenders so they can be released back into society sooner. It doesn’t matter how many times the police arrest a suspect, if the DA doesn’t prosecute and the jails don’t hold them, it’s wasted effort.
So, arm everyone. Defend yourselves and your families. If you don’t think it is worth a human life to defend what you’ve worked for, don’t. But if criminals knew that every adult had a way to defend themselves and their families, they would be a lot more circumspect in their actions. Look it up on Youtube, people pissed off that someone shot and killed an armed robber or car-jacker. Look up the interviews with inmates about how they choose their victims. An armed society is a polite society.
The New Word Wars 
Ummm. I don’t agree with you but I’m trying to understand where you’re coming from.
LikeLike
I don’t expect people to agree with me. I don’t think criminals should be able to prey on citizens and counting on the police to show up and stop them is wasted. Most of the time, the police are just showing up to clean up the mess and take a report.
Do you have family? Children? Are they worth protecting? When a bad guy or four comes through the door isn’t the time to learn to defend them.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Maybe because cop has always been doing gun shots practice but I know that many people are afraid of guns since it is dangerous for both the family especially for those who have kids, before having a gun it must be registered first according to the law in the philippines
LikeLike
Thank you. Also training. Owning a gun is like owning a car, they are both dangerous and you need to learn the laws.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Owning a gun may make you feel safer, but the odds go in the opposite direction. Guns make people less safe. Citizens in good standing (no criminal record, no mental health issues, no domestic violence…) should have the choice if they want to own a gun. But they must know it will make them less safe. People who own guns are more likely to suffer from gun violence. Including accidental shootings, disagreements that turn into gun fights, domestic abuse… There’s less than a 1 percent chance that you will be able to defend yourself from a violent crime. Not only does it take the police time to respond, but it takes time for people to access their own weapons — especially if they are properly locked or stored. https://www.kqed.org/science/1916209/does-gun-ownership-really-make-you-safer-research-says-no
LikeLike
That depends on so much to be accurate. Having nothing more than real world experience and a huge dose of paranoia, I disagree. In nearly 20 years of police work, I noticed that people who use a weapon to defend themselves rarely call the police to report it. I did have to respond to calls where someone was shot in self-defense for robberies, home invasion, and domestic assault. It’s lie men reporting domestic abuse or rape. We know that it happens significantly more than reported. Additionally, any use of a weapon will show as such, without qualification on the Uniform Crimes Reports, the FBI statistics. Your argument that owning a gun makes you more unsafe is a fallacy and conflation of data.
I should be more forthright; I have a master’s in criminology and part of my research focused on interpretation of statistics. Saying that there is less than 1% chance of successfully defending yourself, without context is useless. Data does not exist in a vacuum.
As I said before, a lot doesn’t get reported, especially in cities where DA’s will prosecute a self-defense case more aggressively than the aggressor. Add to that, if you use a weapon to defend yourself, you are arrested and processed like any other suspect.
I read your citation, sadly, the reporter didn’t make any citation for comparison. It was an opinion piece, if that. She should have at least addressed the psychological aspects of ownership and use. There is a necessary mindset involved in having a willingness to use a weapon. I agree that not everyone has that willingness, they shouldn’t carry a gun.
Thanks for the response.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No statistics are perfect and it is difficult to account for numbers of what is not reported, but the interviewee has a number of studies she has done in her bio and refers to other research. Anecdotal stories can inform research but should not replace the conclusions. It’s “under-reported therefore we must reach the opposite conclusion of most agreed upon data” is not a scientific conclusion. I’m sure you are already aware of studies like this. https://everytownresearch.org/report/gun-violence-in-america/ Agree we need more research, but it’s the gun lobby that blocks those efforts. Even if 1 percent chance of using a gun to save yourself is wrong, it is highly unlikely that having a gun is safer than not having one. I know when I taught high school, the kids in gangs said they targeted homes to rob where they knew there were guns. And that’s how very young gang members 12-15 would arm themselves. So I think the idea of under-reporting cuts both ways. I can also see where being a cop distorts your perspective– you deal with crime and criminals all day long and most people are never involved in a single incident of violent crime.
LikeLike
Gotta say, I really enjoy a good discussion.
If you were dealing with 12 – 15 year old gang members, you understand part of the problem. The gang culture tends to align with die young mind set. Sadly, they are being used as shooters more often because the legal loopholes offered to prosecution of minors.
I’m not a fan of Ad Hominem statements and understand the fallacy. I only introduced my personal knowledge as an endorsement. You can’t prove a negative. If researchers were actually trying to find a baseline of facts, I would support the idea of deep studies. As it is, building bias into a survey is simple. The CDC funding research on gun control sounds strange, a little out of the box. Academia funds research to prove it’s point not find facts and if the find the wrong facts, the information is ignored. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/harvard-professor-says-all-hell-broke-loose-when-his-study-found-no-racial-bias-in-police-shootings/ar-BB1ioWoA)
Our disagreement seems to focus on the idea the guns make a person safe or unsafe. The truth is neither statement is true. The true focus of my point is deeper in personal philosophy; A man should have the means and ability to defend himself and his family. As a culture, we have drifted so far from the traditional roles that young men today don’t even learn how to fight. It’s sad that people don’t jump in to defend the weak and stand by while someone is attacked.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Somehow, our society has become convinced that criminals and gangbangers are just misunderstood victims. They’re criminals and should be treated as such. We need that mindset again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Let’s start where we agree. Responsible citizens have a right to defend themselves in learning how to fight or responsibly using guns. But we should acknowledge the facts in stating that owning guns is less likely to actually be safe. Bias is a problem in every field, but the fact that the study was published and promoted proves that counter information is not ignored. The attacks on the author are unacceptable, and threats and violence are never appropriate. The kids I dealt with joined gangs for all kinds of reasons. Some needed protection from other gangs. Some got pulled in by family or friends. Some were just violent and selfish. There’s no one size fits all reason or solution to gun violence. We already have an incredibly high percentage of our population in prison. We need to consider a variety of solutions. Funny how one small point about gun safety quickly bleeds into many different topics that would take 100’s of essays to cover.
LikeLike
To have those conversations is why I started my page. I’ve written a couple of essays on why young men join gangs or behave in specific ways.
I still haven’t seen any facts supporting your assertation that owning guns makes us less safe. When you consider how many weapons are available in the US vs the number of homicides, it is infinitesimal. There are many more violent assaults with other common weapons that no one seems concerned with. How about the number of vehicular deaths? It is easier to argue that driving cars makes us all less safe, DUI, road rage, poor drivers just plain dangerous traffic patterns and high speeds. I think people just freak out because they think guns are evil.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s a more direct link to a research article that gun ownership makes us less safe.
https://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/gunpaper.pdf.
As for the car analogy, the car has other benefits, transport, travel, access to work. Guns only job is to make us safe, yet they make us less safe with the only benefit being they are fun to shoot at targets. Which could also be accomplished by storing guns at the range.
LikeLike
Again, repetition does not change opinion to fact. The study you cited was pretty sloppy, conflating gun ownership to homicide rates without collocating the weapons to the crimes. Simply observing that gun ownership, broken down by region, equals gun ownership makes us unsafe is disingenuous at best.
Ignoring that the CDC has its own fish to fry, and simply looking at the paper referenced, a survey is merely suggestive of a pattern. If you pull up the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, you can evaluate the raw data. What isn’t in either of these reports is the origin of the weapon used. In 2021, the UCR reporting was expanded and that data may become available in the future.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement
An easy, visual refutation is available in map form. If you look at a map showing where homicides occur vs where the majority of guns are owned the analysis falls apart. The majority of homicides occur in urban environments, the majority of guns are owned by rural residents. Unless the murderers are commuting to commit these crimes, I suspect that the offenders are obtaining weapons illegally.
I Pennsylvania, there were over 600 homicides in 2019. Of those, 500 were committed in Philadelphia, the city and county are one in the same. The majority of weapons owned in Pennsylvania are owned rurally not used for target practice. People still hunt to put food on the table. The same pattern can be seen in New York, Texas, Georgia, Michigan and just about anywhere else. California is an anomaly because gun ownership is generally low overall.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fouschyv1u9t11.png%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dda37c6b4c44464454ed90d78b362e002eb49f1ed
My car analogy is still valid. Guns have uses, whether universally accepted or not. Cars are dangerous, ubiquitous and placed in the control of inexperienced children. With nearly 41,000 auto related deaths in 2023, which is more of a threat to others? The same patterns emerge when you look at statistical data from around the world. Britian, with a population of 67 million had 2.1 million violent crimes reported last year. People are getting stabbed, not shot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looking at a map conflates area with population. If you look at per capita rates of violence, the map flips. Hunting is an outlier. How many people are killed by hunting rifles? People are not hunting to our food in the table. The cost of hunting far outweighs the benefit in food. Hunting is a good and useful sport. Not the same as transportation needs of a car. Stabbing are much less deadly than shootings. And if we must have violence, reducing guns would reduce deaths. You can’t just dismiss CDC numbers because of their “agenda”. Their mission is to reduce death and disease and clearly compare to other countries the US has a disease of gun deaths. Again. You can believe what you want to believe, but the math says otherwise. Where is your evidence that gun ownership makes us safer. Please don’t site NRA or gun manufacturers data — they clearly have a political axe to grind on guns.
LikeLike
I believe you missed the point of the maps; they show how homicide concentration does not equate to gun ownership concentration. Just because there are millions of guns in PA doesn’t explain why 90% of the shooting incidents occur in Philadelphia or equate to gun ownership being a risk factor. The argument that a regional study reflects reality is flawed.
I’m not sure where you live but there are still people who hunt and fish for their dinner. I know, if you’re using a gun to fish, you’re probably doing it wrong. The only reason I quit hunting is because it would take me a year to eat a whole deer. So, yeah, in the early 70’s I was putting food on the table for a family of 10. What cost of hunting are you referring to? A .22 cal is about 30 cents, 5.56 is about 70, 90 pounds of meat is over $250 for cheap cuts. Unless you’re still saying the existence of a gun is the cost.
Suicide. That’s an interesting topic. I’ve done a bit of counseling with people on a downward spiral, usually trying to get them professional help. Because of my background, I usually got the calls for Veterans or mentally disturbed people. Go figure, crazy can relate to crazy. It’s not fun to pull up to a barricaded person holding a gun and having to talk them down. I’ve had my share of calls to a suicide. At least with a gun, the job is done right. It’s not the way I’m wired, but I can understand being overwhelmed and just wanting out.
I’ll read the reports you cited, but I have to tell you, it will take a lot to convince me that guns make us less safe. I’ve been arguing from your side for a while, so let me point to the reason I will always fight gun confiscation. The 2nd Amendment isn’t so we can defend ourselves from the occasional attacker, it is to defend ourselves from our own government. There are other factors, but that’s the main point. It is so we can resist oppression with force if necessary. If you feel unsafe, stand behind me and I’ll defend you the same as I did for nearly 40 years. You’re welcome.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hunting: you are leaving out time and opportunity costs. The ammo and gun may be cheap, but the gas, travel time and hours in a blind would pay much more at even a minimum wage job. I never said confiscate guns — completely different argument. I’m just saying people should know the risks. Even if it were ” some studies show” guns in the house pose a higher risk of death by suicide, accidents and other means” is enough for me. By the way you are wrong about second amendment. You left out well-regulated militia. But we can save that for a different thread. Thanks for listening and following the links. It’s been fun.
LikeLike
Hello
LikeLike
A couple more studies on dangers of having a gun in the house. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359744150_Homicide_Deaths_Among_Adult_Cohabitants_of_Handgun_Owners_in_California_2004_to_2016_A_Cohort_Study?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InByb2ZpbGUiLCJwYWdlIjoicHJvZmlsZSJ9fQ.
Risk of suicide is much higher. Especially for women. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360244209_Suicide_Deaths_Among_Women_in_California_Living_With_Handgun_Owners_vs_Those_Living_With_Other_Adults_in_Handgun-Free_Homes_2004-2016
I will say your car analogy is correct in one way — people do understand the increased risks of driving versus not driving. I’m just asking that we also state the increased risks of gun ownership.
LikeLike