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Gun Control discussion


Ser Scot A Ellison

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10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

I never watched Die Hard. And while I concede that it's not easy to shoot a person, I'm sure that I care more about my welfare than that of the person who poses an immediate threat.

 

It's not about how much you care, it's about the loss of executive function and fine motor skills when placed in an extremely stressful situation. TrueMetis has the right of it, do you have any idea how many people forget how to even walk when placed in situations significantly less stressful than armed combat. You won't be able to make an assessment of how much you care about different people's welfare because your adrenaline-addled brain will be incapable of forming higher thoughts. The only thing going through your head will FFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATHTEFUCKISHAPPENINGFFFFUCCCCK, assuming that it isn't just pure white noise mental static.

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32 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Which part?

The part where you most likely grossly overestimate your own capabilities under the extreme stress of a violent gun encounter, despite most likely having never been in such a situation yourself, and discounting the judgment of other people who have actually been in those situations and are trained to be in them. That part.

 

3 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

It's not about how much you care, it's about the loss of executive function and fine motor skills when placed in an extremely stressful situation. TrueMetis has the right of it, do you have any idea how many people forget how to even walk when placed in situations significantly less stressful than armed combat. You won't be able to make an assessment of how much you care about different people's welfare because your adrenaline-addled brain will be incapable of forming higher thoughts. The only thing going through your head will FFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATHTEFUCKISHAPPENINGFFFFUCCCCK, assuming that it isn't just pure white noise mental static.

But Mother Cocanuts isn't like other people. He's special and he would react perfectly because why not? Let's just take his word on it.

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23 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

 

I never watched Die Hard. 

 

And that is why you fail!

7 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

But Mother Cocanuts isn't like other people. He's special and he would react perfectly because why not? Let's just take his word on it.

He’s on that Donald Trump tip where if you had put him in Paris and given him a gun, he would have totally stopped the terrorist attack. Believe me!

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Took you a painfully long time to get to the bolded.  Please cite.  Disregarding the fact the American public is never, ever going to have anything resembling equal firepower to the military, your original assertion in the bolded needs to be supported by evidence you need to provide.  Because I've read a lot on the Constitutional Convention as well as the subsequent ratification battle, and I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

Since you put it so nicely, and since you`re obviously so well read and educated on the subject, I shouldn't have to explain this.  Things such as the 39 Supreme court decision on the matter, or Lepore at Harvard's articles and papers regarding this specifically, and so on. I'm happy to email you their work. 

The English words "bear arms" were used for a specific reason in the second when it was written.  Again, the British crown didn't stir much, if at all, regarding the subject of restricting small arms ownership or use in the colonies, before, or even during the revolutionary war.  They did however take specific measures to seize artillery and its associated equipment and ammunition, in fact that was when the first shots were fired which arguable started the war for independence.  Nor was there any particular movement to restrict small arms by the new American government.  So why even write "bearing arms, people, militia" into the second amendment then?  According to two of the most respected profs on this subject, one from Standford, my school, and the other from Harvard - the second, particularly because of these stated reasons, and specifically due to the British military terminology "to bear arms" being included, as "arms" as was used them did NOT mean just small arms, in fact it specifically was a term used to describe the most powerful weapons of the day.

Perhaps you misunderstand my intentions by bringing this specific subject or military arms, artillery, and the 2A as it was written, UP in the first place.  IMO what it does is it removes small arms from the equation, ie that there is a strong argument that since small arms - and their restriction - weren't much of an issue for either the crown OR the newly formed US  government - and that's true based on numerous sources out there, that the 2A today doesn't afford them any special protections.  http://www.tulprpc.org/attachments/File/Colonial_Firearms_regulation.pdf

This IMO opens a door for the legality of mass confiscation, which, as per my posts after the one that has you so upset, is what I believe is the only solution to this problem.  Tracking ownership, regulating amounts of ammunition, restrictions on this device or that type - none of it will work, as all of these restrictions will be too easy to ignore or break, not that it matters, as a nut with a few hundred rounds with a common bolt action rifle, and very little experience or training, can easily accomplish large casualty event mass shootings still.

Firearms - it all needs to go, as a culture collectively, or it's never, ever, going to end.  No middle road legislation will stop them, or the potential for them (re Australia/Canada/etc).

 

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It's not about how much you care, it's about the loss of executive function and fine motor skills when placed in an extremely stressful situation. TrueMetis has the right of it, do you have any idea how many people forget how to even walk when placed in situations significantly less stressful than armed combat. You won't be able to make an assessment of how much you care about different people's welfare because your adrenaline-addled brain will be incapable of forming higher thoughts. The only thing going through your head will FFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATHTEFUCKISHAPPENINGFFFFUCCCCK, assuming that it isn't just pure white noise mental static.

This CAN be the case, for some individuals, while others will respond in the exact opposite manner.  TrueMetis sounds a lot like a reservist to me, not that his service isn't brave and valid, it's just that he is too new to this, and is still without combat experience.  I've been in 3 warzones, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanitan, and for the last 10 years before retiring worked for 4 of the best companies in the world, training troops/security everywhere from Jordan, to Canada, to the USA. (Sig Sauer Academy, Triple Canopy, Globe Risk, Tundra Security).  Stress reaction under combat conditions is an extremely unpredictable science, at least in terms of how individuals will react to the common physiological body reactions - (fine motor skill loss, auditory exclusion, flattening of the eye causing the retina/etc tunnel vision effect, the elastic time effect, and so on).  I've seen people snap to and become very switched on under fire for the first time, people who under normal conditions weren't very skilled or impressive.  I've also seen people who set the world on fire on the range and in training exercises come apart when under fire.  The average is usually a few instants of pause, and then training begins to take over, and the majority of those under fire for their first few times function more than adaqutely.

So, unless you've been in combat, and/or spent a decade or two studying and applying the adult learning techniques as they relate to combat of all kinds, you really don't have any idea about what people are capable of.  This is DANGEROUS, as spouting off regarding public safety, particularly that the threat is somehow "less than" because potential nuts don't have training and won't be able to accomplish x because of y, is completely false.  So what you and TrueMetis are saying can SOMETIMES be accurate, but you can't count on that.  It doesn't take much if any training at all for a random joe nutjob to become an incredibly hard to deal with threat, thanks to modern firepower and technology.  Ask anyone who has investigated many of the mass shootings in recent history, other than the Major at the military base - and he was a desk driver - few if any had any formal training, and had either self taught/trained, or had no training at all.

The reasons for this are simple - sane people fear death and bodily harm, so the first time a round cracks by their head, or some kind of outside stress that threatens safety happens (car accident, whatever), the body alarm reaction will take over.  Insane, or even sane but nutty people are the ones initiating that first contact, and also frequently don't have the same care for life, in fact they've most often already decided to end their own life very shortly after their mass shooting, and this typically causes the common body alarm and stress reactions to not occur in the same manner as the rest of us to them, if at all.  That's according to the FBI and most of the others in the industry that have studied this at least, and I agree based on my own experience.

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33 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

It's not about how much you care, it's about the loss of executive function and fine motor skills when placed in an extremely stressful situation. TrueMetis has the right of it, do you have any idea how many people forget how to even walk when placed in situations significantly less stressful than armed combat.

And once again, I ask: what does that have to do with me? Are you so certain that when I'm in an extremely stressful situation that I'm going to forget how to even walk? Now I may not have been provoked into pointing my gun at someone and shooting them, but I've had enough experience with myself to know that when I'm in any stressful situation, I always maintain my calm.

39 minutes ago, Liffguard said:

The only thing going through your head will FFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATDOIDOWHATHTEFUCKISHAPPENINGFFFFUCCCCK, assuming that it isn't just pure white noise mental static.

As an authority on what goes on in my head, I disagree.

37 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

The part where you most likely grossly overestimate your own capabilities under the extreme stress of a violent gun encounter, despite most likely having never been in such a situation yourself, and discounting the judgment of other people who have actually been in those situations and are trained to be in them. That part.

But you have no idea who I am or what I do, so what are you basing this "likelihood" off of? Bullshit? And I've discounted what a "trained person" has said because he's projecting. The reactions of which he speaks are not by necessity a result of being in a highly stressful situation. Now he can give you an account of how he feels and what he's seen others do, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my psychological composition. Like I said: I am not he.

42 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

But Mother Cocanuts isn't like other people. He's special and he would react perfectly because why not? Let's just take his word on it.

Why wouldn't you? Who knows better than I do how I would react? You? Someone who knows nothing about me? And if your reading comprehension skills were better, you would've caught on to this:

1 hour ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

But whatever I do lack in "psychological preparedness," I'll take that risk.

Where did I say that I would react perfectly? Sounds like you're the one who's full of shit.

 

 

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25 minutes ago, SerHaHa said:

This CAN be the case, for some individuals, while others will respond in the exact opposite manner.  TrueMetis sounds a lot like a reservist to me, not that his service isn't brave and valid, it's just that he is too new to this, and is still without combat experience.  I've been in 3 warzones, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanitan, and for the last 10 years before retiring worked for 4 of the best companies in the world, training troops/security everywhere from Jordan, to Canada, to the USA. (Sig Sauer Academy, Triple Canopy, Globe Risk, Tundra Security).  Stress reaction under combat conditions is an extremely unpredictable science, at least in terms of how individuals will react to the common physiological body reactions - (fine motor skill loss, auditory exclusion, flattening of the eye causing the retina/etc tunnel vision effect, the elastic time effect, and so on).  I've seen people snap to and become very switched on under fire for the first time, people who under normal conditions weren't very skilled or impressive.  I've also seen people who set the world on fire on the range and in training exercises come apart when under fire.  The average is usually a few instants of pause, and then training begins to take over, and the majority of those under fire for their first few times function more than adaqutely.

So, unless you've been in combat, and/or spent a decade or two studying and applying the adult learning techniques as they relate to combat of all kinds, you really don't have any idea about what people are capable of.  This is DANGEROUS, as spouting off regarding public safety, particularly that the threat is somehow "less than" because potential nuts don't have training and won't be able to accomplish x because of y, is completely false.  So what you and TrueMetis are saying can SOMETIMES be accurate, but you can't count on that.  It doesn't take much if any training at all for a random joe nutjob to become an incredibly hard to deal with threat, thanks to modern firepower and technology.  Ask anyone who has investigated many of the mass shootings in recent history, other than the Major at the military base - and he was a desk driver - few if any had any formal training, and had either self taught/trained, or had no training at all.

The reasons for this are simple - sane people fear death and bodily harm, so the first time a round cracks by their head, or some kind of outside stress that threatens safety happens (car accident, whatever), the body alarm reaction will take over.  Insane, or even sane but nutty people are the ones initiating that first contact, and also frequently don't have the same care for life, in fact they've most often already decided to end their own life very shortly after their mass shooting, and this typically causes the common body alarm and stress reactions to not occur in the same manner as the rest of us to them, if at all.  That's according to the FBI and most of the others in the industry that have studied this at least, and I agree based on my own experience.

Greatly appreciated post, SerHaHa.

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23 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Wait. We do it for health care, which is also a right

Not in the US it isn't. 

23 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

, and we do it for cars and homes...but not for guns? That makes no sense. 

Cars are not a right - neither owning them nor driving them. Homes are also not a right, though if you own your home you do not need to possess insurance most of the time. 

23 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Waive the insurance requirement if someone has a legitimate need to hunt for food. Because the insurance would be so high, a lot of people would not be able to afford it. For the ones who could afford it, because of the risk gun ownership entails it serves to cover the medical expenses of anyone injured or killed with your weapon, and would prompt more people to report guns as lost or stolen so we can actually track these things. There would be a lot less "I lent him my gun" or "I let him borrow it". Medical expenses nationwide due to gunshots and gun injuries are astronomical. We pay for that through higher premiums, and it's high time the gun owners themselves shouldered some of that burden. Maybe they'll think twice before they shoot someone. 

Again, this would be easily seen as overly burdensome to gun owners in possessing a gun for whatever reason. How do you establish a 'legitimate need to hunt for food'? Who establishes that? Doesn't really matter, it's obviously a violation of your rights. Rights are things that must have extraordinary reasons to restrict, not have extraordinary reasons to apply.

I know, it's really hard to get this through people's heads - mine included - because there is basically no other possession that you might have that is considered a right, and thus guns really are a special snowflake. It took a lot of years of arguing with folks on the board to get me to believe this stuff, but it's pretty accurate. Another way to frame it is this: let's assume you replaced 'guns' with 'speech' - would you reasonably expect people to have to get insurance for speech? Would you expect them to have to waive that insurance if they had a legitimate need to, say, whistle? Would you be okay with the poor not having the right to speak if they couldn't afford it?

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41 minutes ago, SerHaHa said:

Perhaps you misunderstand my intentions by bringing this specific subject or military arms, artillery, and the 2A as it was written, UP in the first place.  IMO what it does is it removes small arms from the equation, ie that there is a strong argument that since small arms - and their restriction - weren't much of an issue for either the crown OR the newly formed US  government - and that's true based on numerous sources out there, that the 2A today doesn't afford them any special protections.  http://www.tulprpc.org/attachments/File/Colonial_Firearms_regulation.pdf

This IMO opens a door for the legality of mass confiscation, which, as per my posts after the one that has you so upset, is what I believe is the only solution to this problem.  Tracking ownership, regulating amounts of ammunition, restrictions on this device or that type - none of it will work, as all of these restrictions will be too easy to ignore or break, not that it matters, as a nut with a few hundred rounds with a common bolt action rifle, and very little experience or training, can easily accomplish large casualty event mass shootings still.

Firearms - it all needs to go, as a culture collectively, or it's never, ever, going to end.  No middle road legislation will stop them, or the potential for them (re Australia/Canada/etc).

 

Note also that at the time, having small arms owned by the populace was an incredibly effective deterrent to tyranny, and they had just watched as England had to deal with a tyrant after said tyrant took away all the guns of the English populace and got a standing army.

The standing army part is another important thing, in that at the time standing armies were incredibly rare, and many of the founders thought about expressly forbidding standing armies in the constitution explicitly. Again, example of England was heavy on their minds. 

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I get your point about it being a right, but I'm not sure how economics really enters into that, particularly in our society. So I have the right to own a gun, but that doesn't mean I can necessarily afford the gun I want. Is that $1200 Desert Eagle violating my rights when I can only afford the $125 Saturday Night Special? If this was looked at in the way you're framing it, wouldn't some people expect the government to provide them with a gun free of charge? Seeing as how it's viewed as a right.

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4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I get your point about it being a right, but I'm not sure how economics really enters into that, particularly in our society. So I have the right to own a gun, but that doesn't mean I can necessarily afford the gun I want. Is that $1200 Desert Eagle violating my rights when I can only afford the $125 Saturday Night Special? If this was looked at in the way you're framing it, wouldn't some people expect the government to provide them with a gun free of charge? Seeing as how it's viewed as a right.

You have a right to own one. That means that the government cannot restrict your right. So no, you might not be able to afford it - but that better not be because the government has put massive taxes on it.

And it's not just me looking at it this way - this is how the law has been looking at it for a while now, along with many other rights. Poll taxes fall into this as well - one could reasonably say that you have to pay a fee to vote in order to cover the government costs for the people who want to vote, but this is considered an undue burden on your rights. Same with ID requirements, since you are not required by the government to have ID, much less a specific form, and this is an undue burden to spend that money. Same with things like speaking permits in open areas or protest permits. 

Basically if a right is given to you it means that the government cannot restrict it without heavy justification. It doesn't mean they need to enable you to be able to do it. It simply means that they cannot restrict you as a government entity. You do not have to be given a bullhorn to speak to people, but the government cannot stop you from speaking. You do not have to be driven to the polling offices, but the government cannot impede your right to vote when you get there. You do not have to be given a gun, but the government cannot impede you from having one. 

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1 hour ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

How do you know? What is "walking the walk" as we Americans put it?

For starters, actually doing anything to actually prepare yourself for these dangerous situations you believe you'll handle properly and base your belief on... well, nothing really. Or at least nothing other than "I'll do it because I will!"

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2 minutes ago, baxus said:

For starters, actually doing anything to actually prepare yourself for these dangerous situations you believe you'll handle properly and base your belief on... well, nothing really. Or at least nothing other than "I'll do it because I will!"

But you do know that according to your reasoning the only way I can actually prepare myself to kill a person is to actually kill a person. Should I go outside and find some targets?

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53 minutes ago, SerHaHa said:

This CAN be the case, for some individuals, while others will respond in the exact opposite manner.  TrueMetis sounds a lot like a reservist to me, not that his service isn't brave and valid, it's just that he is too new to this, and is still without combat experience.  I've been in 3 warzones, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanitan, and for the last 10 years before retiring worked for 4 of the best companies in the world, training troops/security everywhere from Jordan, to Canada, to the USA. (Sig Sauer Academy, Triple Canopy, Globe Risk, Tundra Security).  Stress reaction under combat conditions is an extremely unpredictable science, at least in terms of how individuals will react to the common physiological body reactions - (fine motor skill loss, auditory exclusion, flattening of the eye causing the retina/etc tunnel vision effect, the elastic time effect, and so on).  I've seen people snap to and become very switched on under fire for the first time, people who under normal conditions weren't very skilled or impressive.  I've also seen people who set the world on fire on the range and in training exercises come apart when under fire.  The average is usually a few instants of pause, and then training begins to take over, and the majority of those under fire for their first few times function more than adaqutely.

So, unless you've been in combat, and/or spent a decade or two studying and applying the adult learning techniques as they relate to combat of all kinds, you really don't have any idea about what people are capable of.  This is DANGEROUS, as spouting off regarding public safety, particularly that the threat is somehow "less than" because potential nuts don't have training and won't be able to accomplish x because of y, is completely false.  So what you and TrueMetis are saying can SOMETIMES be accurate, but you can't count on that.  It doesn't take much if any training at all for a random joe nutjob to become an incredibly hard to deal with threat, thanks to modern firepower and technology.  Ask anyone who has investigated many of the mass shootings in recent history, other than the Major at the military base - and he was a desk driver - few if any had any formal training, and had either self taught/trained, or had no training at all.

The reasons for this are simple - sane people fear death and bodily harm, so the first time a round cracks by their head, or some kind of outside stress that threatens safety happens (car accident, whatever), the body alarm reaction will take over.  Insane, or even sane but nutty people are the ones initiating that first contact, and also frequently don't have the same care for life, in fact they've most often already decided to end their own life very shortly after their mass shooting, and this typically causes the common body alarm and stress reactions to not occur in the same manner as the rest of us to them, if at all.  That's according to the FBI and most of the others in the industry that have studied this at least, and I agree based on my own experience.

Interesting post! 

What do you think about the discussion regarding keeping guns for self defense even though one might lack formal training? 

 

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25 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Note also that at the time, having small arms owned by the populace was an incredibly effective deterrent to tyranny, and they had just watched as England had to deal with a tyrant after said tyrant took away all the guns of the English populace and got a standing army.

Er, you mean James II? The main objection to him was being catholic and supporting of religious tolerance rather than tyranny I think. Also they dealt with his tyranny by inviting a Dutch army to get rid of him.

 

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6 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Er, you mean James II? The main objection to him was being catholic and supporting of religious tolerance rather than tyranny I think. Also they dealt with his tyranny by inviting a Dutch army to get rid of him.

Nope, I'm talking more about Cromwell and his New Model Army, which functioned as an army that could go anywhere and ended up repressing quite a bit at the time. This was considered kind of a Big Deal. 

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5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Nope, I'm talking more about Cromwell and his New Model Army, which functioned as an army that could go anywhere and ended up repressing quite a bit at the time. This was considered kind of a Big Deal. 

Would a group of republicans really have been primarily thinking of Cromwell when drafting their constitution? I'd have thought Charles trying to arrest MPs in the Houses of Parliament would have been more their thing.

Also while Cromwell did a lot of repressing I don't think he really did a lot of taking away small arms. It was more that he repeatedly demonstrated that hastily raised militias really don't tend to do well against professional soldiers.

 

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1 hour ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Interesting post! 

What do you think about the discussion regarding keeping guns for self defense even though one might lack formal training? 

 

 

I'm Canadian, but grew up for my formative years in the USA, and left before much of the gun culture had filtered into me.  So bear this in mind with my response, as we have a different view up here, as well as very recently I've done an about face on the entire idea of civilians owning firearms at all.

Since it's believed to be fact by enough of the courts and government in the USA that the 2A provides a constitutional right to keep and bear small arms I'll proceed under this assumption here.   There are no licensing or training requirements in America, at least most of it, to own firearms. Here in Canada there are requirements, however there is little that is really retained in just a 3 or 4 hour course, and I'm a certified instructor by the government and AHEIA here in Alberta to teach the restricted PAL course.  I'm also one of 4 civilian instructors that has the cert to train the VERY few people granted a concealed weapons permit up here.  Based on my experience training not just civilians, but SOME armed professionals like police and other units, until you get a lot more advanced training and experience, safety with firearms can be a fleeting thing.  Sweeping/flagging things with the muzzle of the firearm, finger on the trigger when not making a conscious decision to fire, not taking account of what is in the background of your target should you miss or overpenetrate it...these things happen with shocking regularity in formal training classes, even with guys who claim "I've been shooting all my life etc etc etc", and even with some - not a majority, but enough to take notice of - police officers and other armed professionals.  

So yes, there is a right to own firearms and carry them concealed, but the training required to do so is a joke IMO, and the vast, vast majority who do so are as dangerous to others and themselves as they are to any potential threat.  This is proven IMO as well, as even police officers with the mininum 80 hours of range/classroom training time, as well as the benefit of being with a partner/other officers unlike Joe Blow with his CCW permit,  miss 80% of their targets, frequently hit bystanders or other officers, and also frequently wound themselves.  The FBI stats on this are shocking.  So, if a L/E officer does so poorly after weeks or months of training, how safe is Joe Blow with his 2 hour CCW course really going to be under fire?  As I said before, any nutjob can be effective in terms of mass shootings, but to be effective and SAFE as an armed civilian trying to the "right" thing, or as a L/E officer even,  when engaging actual threats in a civilian environment...even L/E screws that up as frequently as they don't. 

 

As for other posts, I agree, or at least used to, with some of the arguments FOR civilians keeping and bearing small arms.  I now maintain that nothing short of a complete ban on civilian ownership of firearms will ever change things as they are now.  Until we commit to doing that, nothing WILL change.  I've already posted my reasons for believing this in the thread.  I'm not sure it can be done, but if somebody doesn't start trying, we're in for more of the same. 

 

 

 

 

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