www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_0...bbery.html

Again, you use an example that has a low likelihood of occuring.

Quote::

In both databases, violence and injury are very low, an unexpected finding since one element of the crime is force or the threat of force. The similarity between the two databases concerning this unanticipated result adds further validation to the quality of NIBRS data.

Adding guns to every bank robbery scenario only adds potential possibility of getting shot. It is very rare that someone who is not a threat in a bank robbery to be killed. If you are a threat to the bank robbery, of course you're probably going to get shot if you miss or don't pull your gun fast enough, or are caught just making a motion for something in your pocket/jacket/socks/belt. You may reduce the rate of bank robberies, but you may increase the rate of deaths (of both robbers and victims alike) in bank robberies.

Owning a gun in the US, requires no formal training, so how can you be so sure that people aren't going to shoot each other by accident, enrage the bank robber(s) and with his "bigger gun" (I agree with Milla) splatter everybody in the joint?

You assume that everyone in the bank with a gun a) knows how to use it and b) knows when to use it so as to make sure the bank robber(s) are taken care of without any innocent deaths or retalitory deaths.

Guns in the hands of every untrained citizen is not my idea of a safe country. At all.

Why don't you look at the murder rates for Washingon D.C. where guns are basicly illegal or at New Orleans where the government took all the guns and wont give them back. I have never heard of a shootout or murder at a gun range. Even the criminal is smart enough to go for the easy target. If you don't, i would like to see you put up a sign outside your house proclaiming that its a gun free zone and that your armed with a phone.

Why would you stop at banning just guns from the workplace? At 5 when everybody runs out the door how many could be killed by being run over by a car. Think someone could do major harm or kill with a pen,pencil,computer or so many other things in the office work enviroment. Would you not allow all of those things?

Guns dont kill people, people kill people

BTW nice Ruger in the photo

And people with guns kill more people than people without.

Edit:
I feel like i'm talking to brick walls here.

Fact:
In a single year, 3,012 children and teens were killed by gunfire in the United States, according to the latest national data released in 2002. That is one child every three hours; eight children every day; and more than 50 children every week. And every year, at least 4 to 5 times as many kids and teens suffer from non-fatal firearm injuries. (Children's Defense Fund and National Center for Health Statistics)
-this is more than the murders in workplaces by THREE TIMES

Fact:
American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. (Centers for Disease Control)

-And you know what's brutal? Canadians own more guns per capita than the US. Except in Canada, if you try to get a permit for a gun... the govt makes DAMN SURE you know how to use one and that you are not a threat to the public in general.


Fact:
Every day, more than 80 Americans die from gun violence.

Fact:
The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Fact:
American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.


Like omg and holy shit: this Texan law adds another fracking excuse with Temporary Insanity that people are going to use to get off of committing murder.

On top of.... DO YOU TRUST EVERY PERSON AROUND YOU WITH A GUN???? I completely don't, why do you?

=HPSF=Nehura wrote:

And people with guns kill more people than people without. I'm calling BS on that. Give me some proof. Edit: I feel like i'm talking to brick walls here Speaking of bricks do a search on Reginald Denny, bet he wishes he had a gun. Fact: In a single year, 3,012 children and teens were killed by gunfire in the United States, according to the latest national data released in 2002. That is one child every three hours; eight children every day; and more than 50 children every week. And every year, at least 4 to 5 times as many kids and teens suffer from non-fatal firearm injuries. (Children's Defense Fund and National Center for Health Statistics) -this is more than the murders in workplaces by THREE TIMES fact more children and teens were killed by cars than guns. Fact: American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. (Centers for Disease Control) Whats your point? Are you just saying that us Americans are evil child killers. -And you know what's brutal? Canadians own more guns per capita than the US. Except in Canada, if you try to get a permit for a gun... the govt makes DAMN SURE you know how to use one and that you are not a threat to the public in general. AMAZING. You honestly have that much faith in your government. Here in the U.S. we pretty much know that the government will mess up anything that they run. Then again you have to trust your govt because they made you register your guns. Our govt gives guns and badges to people that have given me many hours of enjoyment while at the range. Proof.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5Vvi8LR9LQ Fact: Every day, more than 80 Americans die from gun violence. Whats the definition of gun violence. The way some stats are screwed up that could mean 80 Americans shot and killed somebody in self defence. Fact: The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. Just more U.S. bashing. Fact: American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined. How many of these 25 other industrialized countries have outlawed or have strict guncontrol laws. That kind of throws that stat out of wack. Why do you keep thowing out stats that say us U.S. citizens are gun crazed. Like omg and holy shit: this Texan law adds another fracking excuse with Temporary Insanity that people are going to use to get off of committing murder. It adds a layer of protection to the person that uses a gun to defend themselves. Do have any idea how many scumbag criminals sue their victims after they have been shot or killed? On top of.... DO YOU TRUST EVERY PERSON AROUND YOU WITH A GUN???? I completely don't, why do you?

Nope, thats why i have mine.
Why try and blame deaths and injuries on an inanimate object. Lets say that you put a loaded gun into a room and locked it. I dont care how long that its in there but it WILL NOT fire. It will fire when somebody shoots it. Do you understand that its not the piece of steel you keep blaming, its the person.
Gun control means hitting what your aiming at.

=HPSF=Ruger wrote:

Nope, thats why i have mine. Why try and blame deaths and injuries on an inanimate object. Lets say that you put a loaded gun into a room and locked it. I dont care how long that its in there but it WILL NOT fire. It will fire when somebody shoots it. Do you understand that its not the piece of steel you keep blaming, its the person. Gun control means hitting what your aiming at.

So you don't see easy access to a gun or the fact that there is no formal training required to obtain a gun as contributing factors to the abnormal amount of deaths in the US?

Let me get this straight: you don't trust the people around you with guns, so you would rather have your own by making it feasible so that everyone around you has a gun and can feel comfortable to use lethal force whenever they feel threatened and somehow you feel safer? That, to me, is like giving every character in Lord of the Flies, a gun ... and telling me that each character is now safer, instead of the likelihood that now that they are more efficient are killing each other, they will do so.

If people kill people, and not guns, why are you giving guns to people who kill people?... bcos if you allow guns for EVERYBODY, you will inevitably give guns to people who kill people.

Like I said before, my main problem with the law is that it is
HIGHLY INTERPRETATIVE
and easily exploitable.
Would anybody like to comment of that? I guess we can talk about inanimate objects more...

Deaths in 9-11: 2,752
American Deaths in the Iraq war: 3,281
Murders in the US period in 2005: 16,692

With 9-11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom combined, in just one year Americans kill other Americans on US soil three times more than that deadly attack and an ongoing war. And yet you would give away your privacy rights and allow presidents to label annyone as 'enemy combatants" in order to stop terrorism... all the while you make it easier for Americans to kill other Americans, by allowing guns into the car and workplace.


I realize that Americans like their guns. Canadians, per capita, like our guns even more. We have higher rates of gun ownership and yet we are far less likely to shoot each other than the US, the only exception being the Northwest Territories, the ONLY province/territory that allows handguns on your person.

Somehow, as long as you have a gun, you are safe. And yet, if everyone has one, and someone is desparate .... escalation will occur and that someone will bring a full-automatic gun to ensure a greater kill/death ratio. Or they will simply shoot everyone, assuming that they have a gun, and best be safe by killing first.

On top of (my actual biggest criticism of US gun policy) is that there is ZERO training required to acquire a gun. I would never want to live in a city where people driving cars do not have to take driving tests to get their car. And yet here you feel safer, living in a town/city where everyone has a gun, with no formal training as to how to actually use it, use it safely and store it safely.

And apparently the HIGHLY disportionate amount of gun violence in the US compared to 25 industrialized nations COMBINED doesn't even phase you to even remotely consider that you may have a problem in your country.

Quote::

The Second Amendment prohibits infringement of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms. So the requirement of formal training is an infringement on my rights. For the sake of the argument lets say that training was required would that really change the rate at which guns are used in crimes. The training might even make a person more dangerous. I kind of like the thought that if i were ever to get into a gunfight that my opponent learned everything he knows from TV or the movies. I myself have been through some training and testing, nothing to hardcore. Safetywise most of the instruction is nothing more than commonsense,as for the standards for passing the shooting portions i found them to be on the low side. The gun is a tool. It's the attitude of the person. Is the person going to use it for peaceful reasons or is the person going to use it to commit a crime. Either one of those people can pass the same training. This ass did. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...e_shooting Quote:: Let me get this straight: you don't trust the people around you with guns, so you would rather have your own by making it feasible so that everyone around you has a gun and can feel comfortable to use lethal force whenever they feel threatened and somehow you feel safer? That, to me, is like giving every character in Lord of the Flies, a gun ... and telling me that each character is now safer, instead of the likelihood that now that they are more efficient are killing each other, they will do so. Forgive me for never having read or watched Lord of the Flies but my guess is they were not the average person. Where i live everyone is born with the right to carry a gun on themselves unconcealed. So i guess i live that everyday. I read the article on the Texas law and nowhere in the vague article did i see anything about it being legal to use lethal force if you feel threatened. Quote:: Like I said before, my main problem with the law is that it is HIGHLY INTERPRETATIVE and easily exploitable. Would anybody like to comment of that? I guess we can talk about inanimate objects more... Did you even click on the link to the article? The reasonable use of lethal force will be allowed if an intruder is: - Committing certain violent crimes, such as murder or sexual assault, or is attempting to commit such crimes That does not sound open to interpetation to me. Granted that i didn't find the law in it's entirety so show me what part you have found to be HIGHLY INTERPRETATIVE and easily exploitable Quote:: Deaths in 9-11: 2,752 American Deaths in the Iraq war: 3,281 Murders in the US period in 2005: 16,692 With 9-11 and Operation Iraqi Freedom combined, in just one year Americans kill other Americans on US soil three times more than that deadly attack and an ongoing war. And yet you would give away your privacy rights and allow presidents to label annyone as 'enemy combatants" in order to stop terrorism... all the while you make it easier for Americans to kill other Americans, by allowing guns into the car and workplace. More meaningless/slanted stats. I find ironic that a person who wants to take away one of our rights is saying

And yet you would give away your privacy rights

Quote::

On top of (my actual biggest criticism of US gun policy) is that there is ZERO training required to acquire a gun. I would never want to live in a city where people driving cars do not have to take driving tests to get their car. And yet here you feel safer, living in a town/city where everyone has a gun, with no formal training as to how to actually use it, use it safely and store it safely.

Quote::

Can you tell me what is in this training you seem to think that everybody needs to have. Is it magic? It doesn't seemed to have stopped anything in Canada.

And apparently the HIGHLY disportionate amount of gun violence in the US compared to 25 industrialized nations COMBINED doesn't even phase you to even remotely consider that you may have a problem in your country.[quote]

Its bothers me. It bothers me that we keep letting criminals out of jail so that they can commit more crimes.

I'm still waiting for an explanation about the high murder rates in Washington DC and New Orleans.

Do you actually read what I write?

Quote::

I read the article on the Texas law and nowhere in the vague article did i see anything about it being legal to use lethal force if you feel threatened.That does not sound open to interpetation to me. Granted that i didn't find the law in it's entirety so show me what part you have found to be HIGHLY INTERPRETATIVE and easily exploitable

my 2nd post:

=HPSF=Nehura wrote:

Now in Texas: -All you have to do is claim that a person was "attempting" to kill or sexually assault someone. Sexual assault is defined as minor as touching someone inappropriately, such as grabbing a boob or an ass. While one should never touch someone else's ass without permission, that is defined as "sexual assault" and now punishable by lethal force in Texas. Not only is claiming someone was "attempting to do harm" an easy excuse to now come up with, the interpretation of threat varies from person to person. Broad laws like this without specific definition are bad.

me wrote:

At what point in an "attempt" of murder or sexual assault is one allowed to shoot? When you actually see a weapon or when you see physical force being used on the victim or when he had "that look in his eyes that you just knew"? Like I said before, people's interpretation of situations to feel threatened varies from person to person.

Quote::

I find ironic that a person who wants to take away one of our rights...

Again, please read more carefully. I AM NOT SAYING THAT YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE A GUN period, Canadians have more guns per capita than Americans. We somehow manage to keep our gun deaths per capita SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER than Americans and we have more guns per capita than you per person.
We have no "right" to bear arms in Canada, and yet here we are with HIGHER rates of gun ownership.

I am saying, however, that I think guns in the workplace, with ZERO training or knowledge necessary to own a gun, armed with a law that allows you to essentially shoot first and ask questions later or even allow you to later get away with murder in the court room... is a complete mistake. Having guns in businesses that get threatened with violence such as convenient stores or banks is probably a good idea, but why the fucking fuck would you need everyone to have a gun in an architecture office?

Have all the guns you want at home, fuck .... have a whole armory with 15,000 AK-47s... I don't care. Although you might want to be sure that the everyone in your household either know how to use them safely and you trust their judgement to use them only when necessary. But that's just me.

Quote::

Can you tell me what is in this training you seem to think that everybody needs to have. Is it magic? It doesn't seemed to have stopped anything in Canada.

In Canada, by law:
The Firearms Act requires that individuals wishing to acquire non-restricted firearms must take the Canadian Firearms Safety Course (CFSC) and pass the tests or challenge and pass the CFSC tests without taking the course.

Individuals who wish to acquire restricted firearms must also take the Canadian Restricted Firearms Safety Course (CRFSC) and pass the tests or challenge and pass the CRFSC tests without taking the course.

Quote::

In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.

www.cbc.ca/canada/stor...50628.html

And your children are dying:

Quote::

Homicide and suicide are the second and third leading causes of death among teens ages 15 to 19, after accidental death. Firearms were the instrument of death in over 80 percent of teen homicides and about half of teen suicides in 2003. While almost one in four youth firearm injuries results in death, nonfirearm injuries result in death in only one out of every 760 cases.3 Although many murderers of teens below age 18 are teens themselves, two-thirds are age eighteen or older.4 Gang violence has been associated with many teen murders; in 2002 nearly three-quarters of homicides of teens were attributed to gang violence.5 While school-related homicides have received substantial attention, in the first half of the 1999-2000 school year they accounted for less than one percent of all child homicides.6

In 2001, you had 802 accidental gun deaths in the US. That's only 240 deaths shy of the 1040 annual gun deaths of people at their workplace (stat by Jackal). And yet you would INCREASE the number of untrained armed people in your workplace, just to feel safer that you have a gun, assuming that the dumbass that always talks about stupid things at the water cooler won't shoot you by accident when he's playing with his gun.

PS. Lord of the Flies refers to a book that was turned into 2 movies about a group of children marooned on an island when their plane crashed and the adults killed in the crash. In the end, the children basically kill each other in a regression into barbarism from what starts out as a civilized organization that they achieve in the beginning.

PPS. As for Washington DC and New Orleans... both places are American cities where you "have the right to bear arms" on top of they are both urban environments. Do you even bother to understand your own stats? Washington DC is just a city with no inclusion of a greater state with smaller towns to pull down the average. While Washington DC may have low per capita gun ownership, access to guns is apparently NO PROBLEM, as your own stats seem to indicate.

Crime occurs more frequently and in greater numbers and greater rates in cities than in rural towns and townships. If you include a state that has NO RURAL element to it and ONLY encompasses a BIG city, of course the rates are going to be higher. That has nothing to do with gun control, it has to do with comparing watermelons to raisins.

Perhaps you need a map just so we're on the same page:




PPPS. This might be best moved to the debate section methinks. Most of all the posts discuss the Texan firearm law and have almost nothing to do with DD news.

Thanks for that recommend Nehura.
Devil Dog rules these here lands so I'll give him a day or two to make a ruling but it is appreciated your acknowledging when things move, "out of topic" so to say.

Criminals avoid armed citizens

Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.

Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker

Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home

Quote::

If guns prevent crime then why doesn't the USA have the lowest crime rate in the world? Guns don't protect you. Statistics show that you are more likely to be shot if you have a gun in the house. And the person who gets shot is more likely to be the householder than the intruder.

If you know for sure that your "victim" is going to be armed, why would a criminal not simply get a bigger full-automatic gun and shoot first to be safe?
It's called escalation. How many gun crimes/violence/death would you have if you a) didn't have such incredibly easy access to guns, b) actually had some safety training with these guns, and c) stored them safely?

To me, it doesn't make sense to me that you said yourself that you don't trust others with guns, but you support a law that guarantess everyone around you including yourself a firearm and the legal permission to use it.
You still haven't answered my point.

If guns don't kill people and people kill people, like you say, and you give guns to everybody, why are you giving guns to people who kill people?

I liked this upon speaking about 'the right to bear arms":

Quote::

The world was a different place hundreds of years ago. Machine guns didn't exist for a start. And obviously, if the rights of an individual makes life dangerous for other people, then that right should be taken away.

Let me share a little of my life with you. There is a man who more than dis likes me very much.
LET me tell you a little about him. He is like six four, six five 300 pounds. One of his hobbies is powerlifting. The government has supplied him with a badge, a gun even full auto rifles , body armor and a government trained attack dog. He has access to computers that tell him where i live,where i work, what i drive. Restraining orders have not stopped him.
Before i met this man all i ever shot was rifles and shot guns. I got a pistol after things went bad with this guy. I have had him show up at my house with a gun, at my place of work with a gun all the time he was very upset at me.Let me add that the police were in and out of my workplace 24/7. He had no fear of them. Me and my fanily have moved 2000 miles away from there. He is still there in the back of my mind.
Do you have an idea why i'm still here arguing with you. In my mind i'm here because i had a gun and i made him look at the end you don't want to be looking at.
NOW TELL ME WHY THE FUCK I CANT HAVE A GUN IN MY CAR OR AT WORK

I am sorry that you had to go through all that. That sounds like a raw deal. I do wonder what made him so mad/obsessed with you, I sense an interesting story there.
Unfortunately, I'm going to sound a bit heartless but...
you still haven't answered the point: if you give guns to everyone, you give guns to exactly the type of guy you mentioned above. Gun ownership isn't so much the problem as the ease of access to guns that everybody has in the US.

Until you can prove or demonstrate that the US operates under a responsible gun culture, I absolutely do not see a gun in the hand of every possible worker in the United States as a "safer" scenario than it is now, rather instead I see it as being far more dangerous, especially with legislation that makes each person feel empowered to always take the law into their own hands.

While, in your case, you may believe that your gun saved your life, America still has a STAGGERING amount of gun violence compared to the rest of the world (the statistics are brutal and completely disportionate to the rest of the "industrialized" world), compared to countries that allow its citizenry to own guns... meaning that a gun may have saved you, but guns were used to kill others in different situations.

When Americans treat owning a gun as a privilege and not a right,
maybe you'd have less Americans killing other Americas with guns, cos as it stands now ... The #1 enemy who is killing, by a longshot, Americans on US soil, is other Americans. Terrorists can't even come close to the same death toll.

So let me ask you, in order to have a gun in your hand, if that meant an increase of gun deaths at the workplace and on the road* ... would you still want that gun in your hand? Because if you still do, despite the cost of the death of strangers who you may never meet assuming hopefully nothing happens in your workplace or anyone you know elsewhere, there is no point in arguing with you.


*if we assume that the statistic indicating that one is more likely to get shot in a household with a gun than without and translate that to the roads and the workplace under the same conditions.

When you have a country that had to fight a war, with guns, for its independence and survival we take a different look at guns than countries who did not. Japan did not have to fight a war for its Independence and neither did Canada. Our forefathers did. Since our history with arms is different from Canada, our laws and our views will be different. Maybe you should look at it from our point of view and not Canadas.

We are a country born of the citizen soldier and the right to bear arms whether it be a threat from a foreign government, our own government or from our neighbor. Arms are our symbol of individual Freedom...you take our guns, you take our Freedom.

"Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that's good."

George Washington

If Katrina tought us anything, it is that we cannot depend on the Government to provide (insert need). Who then shall?

=HPSF=Dustoff wrote:

Japan did not have to fight a war for its Independence and neither did Canada.

^^Edited out lol. I'll delete my war of 1812 comments then... sigh...