Bikewer
Penultimate Amazing
I suppose you could cook up circumstances where an "armed revolt" was a justifiable endeavor, bizzarre though that might be.
There are a wide variety of sporting and recreational uses for firearms of course...Some of them are even Olympic events.
But to declare that there is never any need for self-defense purposes for firearms seems rather odd. One post above gave a single instance. But there are many such. When I was a lad, I joined the NRA primarily to get the organization's publication, The American Rifeman. This had lots of excellent technical articles and reviews each month.
They also published a monthly column called the "armed citizen" which was news accounts of people using firearms to defend themselves. These were culled from newspaper articles (citations required) and were mailed in by members (no internet back then).
There would be 20-30 published each month. Which would seem to indicate a much higher incidence of such events, since these were only articles sent in to the magazine by members of the NRA.
This continues to the present day, with an online list of "armed citizen" incidents:
https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen/
These things happen. There are violent criminals, and they attack, murder, rape, and assault people. The Police (and of course, I write this as a police officer) cannot defend you from these things, save in vastly rare situations. Usually we pick up the pieces. We do a fair to middling job of catching the bad guys, but that's after the fact. Doesn't help the victim much.
It would be very pleasant to live somewhere that such things are so rare as to be of no concern. Much of the US is actually that way; people living in small towns and rural situations where no one locks their doors and crime is almost non-existent.
But that's not the case for people living (as does much of the population) in large cities with a high crime rate.
There is always the possibility that an individual will be targeted for robbery, rape, assault, carjacking, home-invasion, whatever.
One can of course meekly submit.... Often handing over your goodies to a robber ends the transaction. Not always. Sometimes victims are killed anyway. The other crimes involve violence from the get-go.
Some people are strongly averse to violence. They simply cannot bear the thought of harming another person, regardless of the circumstances. That's fine.
But there are those of use who simply cannot bear the thought of meekly submitting to attack. We do not see why we should be deprived of the ability to defend ourselves.
There are a wide variety of sporting and recreational uses for firearms of course...Some of them are even Olympic events.
But to declare that there is never any need for self-defense purposes for firearms seems rather odd. One post above gave a single instance. But there are many such. When I was a lad, I joined the NRA primarily to get the organization's publication, The American Rifeman. This had lots of excellent technical articles and reviews each month.
They also published a monthly column called the "armed citizen" which was news accounts of people using firearms to defend themselves. These were culled from newspaper articles (citations required) and were mailed in by members (no internet back then).
There would be 20-30 published each month. Which would seem to indicate a much higher incidence of such events, since these were only articles sent in to the magazine by members of the NRA.
This continues to the present day, with an online list of "armed citizen" incidents:
https://www.nraila.org/gun-laws/armed-citizen/
These things happen. There are violent criminals, and they attack, murder, rape, and assault people. The Police (and of course, I write this as a police officer) cannot defend you from these things, save in vastly rare situations. Usually we pick up the pieces. We do a fair to middling job of catching the bad guys, but that's after the fact. Doesn't help the victim much.
It would be very pleasant to live somewhere that such things are so rare as to be of no concern. Much of the US is actually that way; people living in small towns and rural situations where no one locks their doors and crime is almost non-existent.
But that's not the case for people living (as does much of the population) in large cities with a high crime rate.
There is always the possibility that an individual will be targeted for robbery, rape, assault, carjacking, home-invasion, whatever.
One can of course meekly submit.... Often handing over your goodies to a robber ends the transaction. Not always. Sometimes victims are killed anyway. The other crimes involve violence from the get-go.
Some people are strongly averse to violence. They simply cannot bear the thought of harming another person, regardless of the circumstances. That's fine.
But there are those of use who simply cannot bear the thought of meekly submitting to attack. We do not see why we should be deprived of the ability to defend ourselves.
