A well regulated militia...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 4:43 am

Massively arming the population has not worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Somalia. If you don't have an effective police force and your criminal syndicates are fielding their own armies with machine guns, the presence or absence of guns in the hands of normal citizens accomplishes basically nothing.

Of the ten countries with the highest civilian gun ownership rate, the United States, Switzerland, Finland, Uruguay and Sweden are all pretty nice places. But Serbia, Yemen, Iraq, Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia are all violent hellscapes where the government holds power by a nail and people are disappeared by criminals on a regular basis. Civilian gun ownership is simply not a factor in whether your country is occupied by armed gangs. The number of guns required for armed gangs to take over is so small relative to the population that it does not put you even in the top half of gun owning countries (South African gun ownership is very low!), and having lots of guns in civilian hands does not magically bestow organization or the rule of law to the land (Yemeni gun ownership is really high!).

-Username17

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:42 am

yeah but you can shoot people if you have a gun

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:48 am

Psychic Robot wrote:yeah but you can shoot people if you have a gun

Can you just clear something up, here?
A. Psychic Robot is a troll
B. Psychic Robot is so dangerously retarded* that someone should be paid to look after him and he shouldn't be allowed anything more dangerous than a felt-tip pen
C. Psychic Robot is evil, and actually wants people to go around murdering each other

Which is it, PR? Note that your statements haven't actually allowed for a special option D.

*Or possibly just "under the age of 10"

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:08 am

d. pr supports the constitution and self-defense

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:21 am

Huge restrictions on the ownership of firearms just make sure that the only guys with guns are the criminals. That's bad.

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” - Robert A. Heinlein

Is a measure of prevention of crime, but, as everything, depends of context. When the armed gangs are good old African Tribal Warfare or a group of trained ex-military guys like Los Zetas, civilians can't be expected to do much. Is not only about the guns, is about the people who use them.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:30 am

Psychic Robot wrote:yeah but you can shoot people if you have a gun

If you want the gang to retaliate by killing you and everyone you care about after making you watch them gangrape every women in your family.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 6:47 am

Guns won't protect you from organized crime including gangs. They can protect you from random crime like a mugging, or a burglar that plans to torture your pin code out of you in your home.

But all the guns in the world would not protect you from getting shot as you leave your house by a Zeta-cartel sniper. (Unless you stacked them all as a sort of wall from your home to your office, and then the cartel would likely car bomb you.)

What guns among the population could do with regards to organized crime is (under some circumstances) to allow a mob to go all "Reichskristallnacht" on gang and gang relatives, gang friends, and anyone else they don't like that day.

Of course unless you cracked down hard on that mob, and I mean military hard, all you'd have accomplished a few years down the line is replacing one gang with a new gang formed from some members of that vigilante mob. Which means you're back at the starting point, just with more dead people buried.

In order to beat organized crime you need to both deny them their profits by tightening money laundring counter-measures (legalizing the drug trade and letting the pharmazeutical corps drive the gangs out is a pipe dream, unfortunately, no matter how effective it would be), infiltrate their organisations with under cover cops, offer witness protection programs to make members turn traitor, but above all, have to pay all your law enforcement officers and judges and all really, really well so they don't get corrupted too much. All so people's faith in the law being stronger than the gangs is restored.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:01 am

Fuchs wrote: In order to beat organized crime you need to both deny them their profits by tightening money laundring counter-measures (legalizing the drug trade and letting the pharmazeutical corps drive the gangs out is a pipe dream, unfortunately, no matter how effective it would be), infiltrate their organisations with under cover cops, offer witness protection programs to make members turn traitor, but above all, have to pay all your law enforcement officers and judges and all really, really well so they don't get corrupted too much. All so people's faith in the law being stronger than the gangs is restored.

You also want really good Internal Affairs in order to keep the police on the straight and narrow. And if the gangs are of the kind you get in Mexico, the US and other third world countries, you probably want witness protection to actually relocate them to other (better) countries where the gangs can't reach them. Even then, when they're on the plane, they have to worry that the gangs will put snakes on the plane.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 7:14 am

If you want the gang to retaliate by killing you and everyone you care about after making you watch them gangrape every women in your family.

that just happens to be my fetish, so the joke's on them

(not really and I also support the police in addition to a well-armed people)

K · Post by K » Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:04 am

Fuchs wrote:Guns won't protect you from organized crime including gangs. They can protect you from random crime like a mugging, or a burglar that plans to torture your pin code out of you in your home.

Guns won't protect you from random crime. That kind of thing relies on speed and surprise, so in most cases they've got the drop on you and pulling a gun means you get shot in the face.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:27 am

K wrote:
Fuchs wrote:Guns won't protect you from organized crime including gangs. They can protect you from random crime like a mugging, or a burglar that plans to torture your pin code out of you in your home.
Guns won't protect you from random crime. That kind of thing relies on speed and surprise, so in most cases they've got the drop on you and pulling a gun means you get shot in the face.

I said they can, not that they always will. Especially in your home you might not get surprised.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:30 am

I could see it working if they break into your house and you are alerted before they get to your room - they break a window getting in, that wakes you up, you grab the magnum you keep under the bed, and the very moment they open the door you gun them down. The instant they do it.

Possibly making sure your doors are designed to be able to shoot through (with non-HP bullets), so the instant the handle turns you open up.

And that could work as long as you never have a guest in your house, likewise aren't married or a parent. Because otherwise you'll accidentally gun down a guest, or a member of your family. Sure, you could wait until you can ID anyone who enters the room, but if you're waiting to make out who it is, holding a gun, an actual criminal will shoot you first.

Granted, this is from someone who wouldn't know about this stuff, given my country doesn't let people walk around armed for no sensible reason. But then again, I have yet to be shot or even threatened with a firearm, so things are looking pretty good for the gun laws of my country.

K · Post by K » Fri Oct 21, 2011 8:40 am

Koumei wrote:I could see it working if they break into your house and you are alerted before they get to your room - they break a window getting in, that wakes you up, you grab the magnum you keep under the bed, and the very moment they open the door you gun them down. The instant they do it.

I've actually been in a home that was being broken into on two separate occasions, and both times they ran away when they saw me.

For people who have never been on the receiving end of violent crime, I don't fault you for assuming that television or the movies depict it even semi-realistically where people have time to make rational decisions. In fact, any low-level street crime that isn't from surprise or can't be done quickly just doesn't happen.

I've literally had a bum try to bum rush me from behind and then turn around and run away when I put my fists up. Ruining the element of surprise is that effective.

That being said, having a gun on you when you are surprised is just an invitation to get shot with your own gun.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:19 am

Of course even though accidental or incidental (like a dysfunctional family argument) gun-related injuries/fatalies are much higher than premeditated ones, the latter get more attention in the media.

No one wants to admit that it's much more likely to get shot by your spouse or your kid in the heat of the moment than fend off a burglar action-hero style. And of course people think that those kind of gun shootings can't happen to them; the DK effect only makes the whole thing worse.

If gun control advocates are to get anywhere we first need to make people aware that even if you're all up in the gun safety bizness, four times out of five that gun is going to be used on one family member against another as opposed to some burglar. Then again, Americans still are derping out on the idea that income inequality and poverty literally kills; there's no way any real progress is going to be made on this anytime son. Maybe if Hollywood ran a series of movies where the hero watched his family members getting accidentally shot with their own guns for a few years would break people out of this self-aggrandizing and hysterical fantasy.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:48 am

Of all the crimes that have been committed against me, there wasn't a single one that having a gun would prevent. It was either theft of my property when I wasn't there to protect it, or it was some smarmy company cheating me out of money.

That being said, I'd rather have a society where I didn't HAVE to shoot people to protect myself. I am a proponent of sport shooting and hunting and would never want guns banned, but I think it'd be more effective to just have a society where shit like that happens as infrequently as possible.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 9:51 am

K wrote:For people who have never been on the receiving end of violent crime, I don't fault you for assuming that television or the movies depict it even semi-realistically where people have time to make rational decisions.

Oh, violent crime I'm familiar with, just not gun crime.

That being said, having a gun on you when you are surprised is just an invitation to get shot with your own gun.

Agreed. It might work for not getting selected as a victim in the first place (if you open carry), but then again if they don't see it until they start the mugging or whatever, then yeah, they shoot you. I don't want it to seem like I think civilians should be armed, I can just maybe see edge cases where it could work in an individual's favour (with the exception of those times where it actually works against them).

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 1:31 pm

In a lot of cases, assaults don't come as a surprise, but start with remarks, pushing, and similar antics, before they escalate and we end with people getting kicked to death in train stations. Such assaults would likely be easily stopped if people had a gun. That's not a mugging, that's just some scumbags feeling like kicking someone, anyone, until he stops moving.

Intervening in such a crime would also likely happen more often when people were carrying guns. I know, given that there have been cases when someone "played hero" and got killed or maimed as a result, I won't intervene in such a crime if I happen to see it since I am unarmed, and not about to play victim.

Half my country could carry concealed weapons without any permit until the mid-nineties. Yet we didn't have even near as much trouble with gun crimes than cities in the US where you are not allowed to own or carry a firearm.

So, it's a fact that allowing people to carry guns doesn't make your country unsafe (whether or not it makes your country safer is another question). But simply banning weapons doesn't do a thing for you or anyone else - it just makes some asshole fearmonger politician look better in the eyes of the idiots believing guns cause crime.

If anyone disagrees, feel free to try to explain to me why my country, Switzerland, was not riddled with shootings in the time from 1945 to 1994 or so, even though we had the most liberal weapon laws in half the cantons this side of Texas.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 1:47 pm

Is Switzerland the country where everybody is in the military, and thus has undergone full military training regarding gun safety and how to deal with violent offenders? As well as, presumably, filtering out the kind of people who certainly shouldn't have guns (or who would be criminals regardless, allowing you to keep tabs on them)?

Just saying.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:01 pm

Not to mention that every male 18+ had a god damn assault rifle in his house. (In Switzerland).
Only place with more guns is probably Israel.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:05 pm

Koumei wrote:Is Switzerland the country where everybody is in the military, and thus has undergone full military training regarding gun safety and how to deal with violent offenders? As well as, presumably, filtering out the kind of people who certainly shouldn't have guns (or who would be criminals regardless, allowing you to keep tabs on them)?

Just saying.

"Full Military training regarding gun safety" is pushing it. Most of the time the gun is just 4.5 kg of metal getting in the way of handling your radio, cannon, tank or computer in the office. Also, unless you're combat infantry you don't get any training regarding how to deal with attackers other than "verbal warning, warning shot, then double tap, aim for the center of body". And not everyone is in the army - no women, other than those volunteering, and many can get away with medical from conscription. We also got over 20% foreign residents in the country.

And no, until this millenia there was not much of a screening process done either. One of my fellow corporals was walking around with a loaded private weapon during our service, ordered a recruit who was a chemist to make some explosives for him (which he used to blow up illegally acquired munition parts in his quarter, blowing a hole in the window as well) and was very fond of Wehrmacht-souvenirs, to the point of showing pics of the Reichskriegsflagge hanging over the bed in his home.

It's just so that most crimes are being done with illegally acquired weapons by people who are not allowed to own weapons in the first place.

Gx1080 · Post by **Gx1080** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:15 pm

"It's just so that most crimes are being done with illegally acquired weapons by people who are not allowed to own weapons in the first place."

Bingo. +1 to Fuchs.

Also:

“When seconds count, the police are just minutes away.”
-Popular saying on 2nd Admentment forums.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 4:37 pm

K wrote:
That being said, having a gun on you when you are surprised is just an invitation to get shot with your own gun.

Citation needed. As in, I seriously want statistical data of the number/percentage of people who have their guns taken away from them and used against them.
I won't say cops don't count, but I will point out that cops (by the nature of their job) have to come into close contact with dangerous people much more often than the average person.

K wrote:I've literally had a bum try to bum rush me from behind and then turn around and run away when I put my fists up. Ruining the element of surprise is that effective.

And yet...you were just describing how the element of surprise is so awesome that a person with a gun has no chance to avoid it. Despite the fact that your own experience shows that you CAN avoid it. WTF?

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 4:54 pm

the issue of whether gun control is ultimately beneficial is moot. it's in the constitution. the second amendment automatically takes precedence over liberal hand-wringing and attempts at social engineering.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:10 pm

PoliteNewb wrote:
K wrote:
That being said, having a gun on you when you are surprised is just an invitation to get shot with your own gun.
Citation needed. As in, I seriously want statistical data of the number/percentage of people who have their guns taken away from them and used against them.

That's fair. The first part is that carrying a gun increases your chances of being shot and killed.

Overall, Branas's study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher.

The actual rate varies in different studies. Kellerman's study found that people who had a gun in their home were 2.7 times as likely to be homicide victims in their home. Several other studies have similarly found that people who own, carry, or live near guns are indeed more likely to be shot. Relative risk rates vary between twice and ten times depending on how the study is set up.

Now the chances of you getting shot with specifically your own gun are astronomically higher than your chances of firing or even demonstrating your gun in self defense. But those numbers include suicides, so I can't give you any really helpful numbers. Gun owners are shot way more than than non-gun owners, and gun owners commit suicide with their own guns so often that whatever statistics exist for how often someone else taking your gun away and shooting you with it simply disappear into the more than sixteen thousand gun suicides that happen in the US every year.

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:18 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Of the ten countries with the highest civilian gun ownership rate, the United States, Switzerland, Finland, Uruguay and Sweden are all pretty nice places. But Serbia, Yemen, Iraq, Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia are all violent hellscapes where the government holds power by a nail and people are disappeared by criminals on a regular basis. Civilian gun ownership is simply not a factor in whether your country is occupied by armed gangs.

I have to call you on this one Frank, you just used an apple and organge comparison. To only take the top highest rates and to state that this proves that not "a" factor is wrong. It does prove that it is not the only factor.

(I interrupt myself for a point of order. It looks like you got that list from Wikipedia which listed only "178 countries surveyed as of 2007." I'm not sure that's a good enough sample size, considering all of the nations in the world, in general. The numbers may not be completely accurate. "That table gives also the minimum and maximum estimates. Note that for some countries, this margin of error is considerable. E.g. Yemen, ranked second with an ownership rate of 54.8, has a low estimate of 28.6 and a high estimate of 81.1." Important since you just mentioned Yemen.)

Here is the complete list : Note the avg, low and high columns.

Number one on the bottom (#178) is Tunisia. (Didn't the Arab Spring start there?) Like the top there are good nations and bad nations on the bottom 10. They include Bangladesh, Fiji, Eritrea, Indonesia, Singapore, Ethiopia, Ghana, Solomon Islands, East Timor, Tunisia

I also point out that you tend to lump lawless despotic gangs with lawfull but equally despotic government agencies. Defending against the former is generally consiered patriotic, while defending against the later is generally considered treasonous. It doesn't help when the religious authorites either side with the thugs or are the thugs themselves.

Clearly just giving arms to civilians willy nilly is a grossly stupid thing to do. The general arms of local officials needs to be at an equivalent level and their arming needs to happen first. The local officals also need to be respected by the local population. There are a lot of other factors that need to be in place. But when there are no guns by either the civilian or the police force, bad things happen.