water cannon

[drewpee]

This toppic is makes me sad. http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/guns.htm

[DayGlow]

Originally Posted by drewpee

This toppic is makes me sad. http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/guns.htm

This is even more sad

http://www.washingtonaccidentbooks.c...cident-injury/

Why does it impact you differently because a gun is involved?

[baronWastelan]

this is saddest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJfz6n2YEEk

[BadAim]

I have just spent the last hour and a half reading this entire thread, and it was much less painful than I imagined it would be. I'm quite impressed with the (relatively) civil level of intercourse going on here, a very difficult thing considering the highly charged nature of the subject.

By way of background I'm a Yank, who lives in a State where persons are required to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public (or to remove a pistol from their house for any reason), and that such permit must be issued if there is no compelling reason not to. To the best of my knowledge no permit holder in my state has ever committed a violent crime with a handgun (to be honest a few have lost their permits due to being stupid).

I'd point out a couple of things on the subject of armed citizenry;

First) Our founding fathers feared democracy possibly more than totalitarianism. They realized that democracy was little more than organized mob rule, hence the idea of a constitutional republic. The second amendment was (as with the rest of the bill of rights) considered "unfinished business", a simple statement of what the original drafters of the constitution had held as "self evident". It was meant to declare that the safety of the State as a whole relied on the ability of it's citizens to defend themselves, each other, and the community at large with whatever weaponry was available at the time. The validity of this idea has not fundamentally changed.

Second) I've carried a pistol on my person most of the time for over 15 years. I have not in that time, even once for a moment considered shooting someone because they "got on my nerves". I have during that time made the conscious decision that I would be the one running towards the gunfire, instead of away. I have on several occasions invested my time hanging around convenience stores late at night shooting the breeze with the clerk when I was uncomfortable with some of the other 'clientele'. I've never gotten a complaint about this habit, and a few 'thank you's'. I rarely turn down a job because the "neighborhood is too rough". I often do work for people who genuinely believe that their life is in danger (I'm a locksmith, by the way), but for the few moments that I'm there I know that it's not so much. (I had one woman actually say to me that she felt safer than she had in years while I was there [she'd been in an abusive relationship for years], and she just couldn't explain it. I didn't bother to.) Whatever any of you might think, I believe that the world around me is just a tad safer because I'm armed.

Third) Those of you who believe that the "Police" give a crap about your safety or are able to in most cases do anything about it are delusional. If you want to believe this fairy tale then go for it. The police in the united states are armed for their own protection and have no responsibility (other than what the bring to the job due to their own convictions) for the safety of individual citizens, and I have no reason to believe that the situation is any different anywhere else. If your police are not armed at all, how can you expect them to be of any assistance to you in a deadly encounter? (I'm not knocking the thousands of police officers who really believe in their work, but most of them will tell you that they just can't be everywhere and that when the S&%$ hits the fan they probably can't help you

finally) Since Cain slew Able, the human race has found no end to the methods by which they might murder each other. Until recent history the victory went to the bigger and the stronger or the Mob. The vast majority of the human race has been for the vast majority of history been slave to whoever was bigger and/or stronger or whoever controlled the Mob. It was not until Sam Colt came along that the idea of all men being equal meant anything. No man is free to any extent further than he is able to defend that freedom. If you think that you will be less dead should you be beaten or stabbed to death than if your shot to death, you are welcome to your opinion. My opinion is that your insane. It's OK, we can still be friends.

BTW, I have lots of friend in both the UK and Canada, and I love them dearly, I just don't think they should not have the option of being able to defend themselves in the most efficient way possible.

[ElAurens]

Thank you BadAim.

Well said sir.

S!

[baronWastelan]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

Thank you BadAim.

Well said sir.

S!

Agree, and also to all reading this: think about those lovely petite females, who could avoid being robbed, raped and killed if they have a small pistol tucked away discreetly in their purses.

[BadAim]

Originally Posted by baronWastelan

Agree, and also to all reading this: think about those lovely petite females, who could avoid being robbed, raped and killed if they have a small pistol tucked away discreetly in their purses.

I think of them more than all others. It is the weakest who are benefited most by going armed. An armed woman protecting her children is a creature of a ferocity and deadliness that nature could never match.

[Skoshi Tiger]

Originally Posted by BadAim

I think of them more than all others. It is the weakest who are benefited most by going armed. An armed woman protecting her children is a creature of a ferocity and deadliness that nature could never match.

There is a nasty trend in my home state over the last few years where elderly or imfirmed people are subject to home invasions, they inevitably get bashed and even raped in some cases, while the criminals get away with little more than pension money and family heirlooms.

About year ago a bloke of about 80 had to justify his actions for shooting a home invader. The media put him through the ringer until the facts of the incident came through.

The criminal was shot pulling the shotgun from the old guys hands, to get to be shot he and his friends had kicked in the front door, ransacked the house for half an hour and then had to bash down the old guys bedroom door where he had barricaded himself. He even warned the criminals that he was armed.

From my ( and eventually the courts) point of view the old guy did everything reasonably possible to avoid hurting anyone while protecting himself.

Unfortuanately there is a small element of our societies that cannot be reasoned with.

Cheers!

[unreasonable]

I think I understand the proplem for our US contributors: they probably do not want to come out and say that other peoples do not have the right to decide their own gun laws, since this is so obviously unreasonable, but they worry that the arguments used by other peoples to reach the conclusion that stringent gun controls are a good thing might be applied to the US too, and be used by the government to undermine or limit their current rights to carry arms. So not being content to defend their own gun laws they feel the need to criticise other people's laws as well.

At the extreme, to safeguard the 2nd Amendment from the dreaded "wedge" argument, the rights of all other nations in the world to manage their own affairs according to their own traditions, culture and laws has to be, if not denied outright, denigrated, held up to ridicule and contempt, and condemned as a slippery slope on the road to totalitarian enslavement.

So I would really appreciate it if any of the US contributors would step up to the plate, play the game, man up, stop evading the issue, and state whether or not they believe that the people of the UK, via the mechanism of their own constitution and law, have the self-evident right to limit the right to keep and bear arms.

Come on, you know you want to...