I own a gun!

Kestrel said:
The questionnaire used in the 1988 BCS can be found online. It doesn't seem to ask the questions required to come up with Kleck's answers.
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Then maybe it was Home Office statistics derived from offenses reported to the police. The annual HOSB is made up from both. I don't have a copy of Point Blank on hand, and Google Books version doesn't list the references, so I can't give an exhaustive answer at this point. And yes, I'm aware the HOSB doesn't list the number of incidents in which the occupants were in the dwelling when it was burgled, but I assume that, in the days prior to widespread availability of the internet, Kleck looked in the Home Office archives himself, or got an associate from a British university to look for him.

Whatever the case, and despite spending quite a bit of time looking, I haven't been able to find even an attempt to refute that particular statistic, and lord knows Kleck's work has been scrutinized and challenged a very great deal. At the risk of introducing an argument from incredulity of my own, I don't find it very plausible that he could have published erroneous or fabricated data without someone calling him on it by now.

I will add one caveat of my own, which is that I see the HOSB burglary statistics count attempted burglaries in which the burglar was unable to gain entry as a burglary (though they break down the "attempted," "no loss" and "with loss"). It is thus possible that many of those "hot" burglaries were cases in which the burglar started to break in but failed to gain entry. Even so, the comparative point remains that American burglars (for the most part) apparently don't even try if they believe an occupant is present.
 
Rolfe said:
(As well as the old-lady scam, [...]
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I think the statistics regarding forced entry that Kestrel dug up put paid to that one.

Rolfe said:
[...] I wonder if a garden shed being broken into overnight while the owners were asleep in the house would go in that category? That one's common too.)
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From the Home Office Statistical Bulletin Crime in England and Wales 2007-2008:
Domestic burglaries include burglaries in all inhabited dwellings, including inhabited caravans, houseboats and holiday homes, as well as sheds and garages connected to the main dwelling (for example, by a connecting door).
Non-domestic burglaries include burglaries to businesses (including hotels and similar accommodation) and also some burglaries of sheds and outhouses where these are not clearly connected to the inhabited property.
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So, no. May I ask why you bother demanding references when you obviously don't even look at the ones that are provided? The .pdf of the HOSB has a contents page, you know.

Rolfe said:
I'm merely saying to you that the way you are interpreting the statistics does not square with the actualite.
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Does not square with your personal experience. If you can be bothered to look at page 93 of the HOSB, you will find a map showing rates of recorded offenses of domestic burglary at local authority level. The "hot spots" are fairly evident: Middlesborough, West Yorkshire, Manchester, Nottingham, Luton, Reading, Bristol and parts of London stand out like sore thumbs. Sussex has a below average rate of domestic burglaries (with the exception of Brighton & Hove, which is average), as does Herefordshire, and indeed most of Hertfordshire (with the notable exception of the Borough of Welwyn Hatfield).

Look, I've presented a claim, I've presented a source, I've provided possible explanations for a number of objections. Is there a point at which the conspiracy theorist tactics of continually presenting objections without counter-evidence can cease?
 
 
in my area, cops don't do anything unless stolen weapons are involved, even then they don't do anything but take the serial # and say we might get them back, but probably not.
 
Oliver said:
Then I hope you don't think that you actually prevented a bank robbery - or that a bank robbery actually happened while you didn't wear a gun in a bank. ;)

I could make the same unrelated and rather ridiculous argument: "Today I had a knife in my hand while I was cutting onions - and during that time, no burglar showed up. Imagine what could've happened if I hadn't the knife protecting me." :D
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If a robbery had taken place would you have pulled out your six shooter and started blazing away,increasing the risk of innocent people getting hurt? I would rather see the the theives getting away with the money,and no deaths. No amount of money is worth a life.
 
dafydd said:
If a robbery had taken place would you have pulled out your six shooter and started blazing away,increasing the risk of innocent people getting hurt? I would rather see the the theives getting away with the money,and no deaths. No amount of money is worth a life.
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That's right, gun owners are irresponsible morons who all think they are the main character in a western.
 
tyr_13 said:
That's right, gun owners are irresponsible morons who all think they are the main character in a western.
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Or James Bond, or Rambo.

Honestly, there ought to be a variant of Godwin's Law:
As an interet forum discussion on gun control grows longer, the probability of a gun control proponent implying or asserting that a participating gun owner harbors fantasies of being a motion picture character approaches 1.
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The obvious corollary being that any gun control/prohibition proponent to do so gets excluded from the rest of the discussion.

Fairness does demand, of course, that there be a concomitant sanction on any gun rights proponent who uses the terms "nanny state," "(creeping) socialism," "communism," wheels out the bogus Hitler "this year will go down in history" quote, or the "In year X, country Y introduced gun control; some time after year X, Z million people died as a result of government policy" list.
 
Nat Geo's Guns in America was the rare show on the topic that didn't seem to have an agenda. Worth a watch regardless of which side you're on.

The Joe Horn footage is unreal. Still can't believe he got away with it, but I can't say I wouldn't want him as a neighbor.
 
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"Arnold's Law"; that's a good name for it. Thanks, Phrost.

dafydd said:
If a robbery had taken place would you have pulled out your six shooter and started blazing away,increasing the risk of innocent people getting hurt? I would rather see the the theives getting away with the money,and no deaths. No amount of money is worth a life.
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While I think everybody on this forum, every reputable firearms instructor, and indeed the law agrees with the sentiment that "no amount of money is worth a life," the problem is that any robber armed with a firearm (or other lethal weapon) has, ipso facto, decided that he doesn't agree with that notion. He has already decided that he is prepared to inflict bodily harm, with potentially lethal consequences, on someone in order to acquire some money. Your life is worth less to him than the contents of your wallet, or the cash register, or the tellers' drawers. Or at the very least that's what he wants you to believe, and you'd be unwise not to.

And that's the problem with the conventional wisdom that, when confronted with a robber, "you should not resist, but just give them what they want": it requires relying entirely on the goodwill of an individual who has already signaled that he doesn't care about your physical well-being, and is indeed willing to damage it (possibly over as little as $40). If we could be certain that robbers wouldn't hurt us, we could safely refuse to hand over the money. But nobody advises that.

That's not to say that giving the robber what he wants and hoping he won't hurt anybody is usually the best (or, more correctly, least bad) option, simply because he holds the initiative, and will be able to respond to any attempted action on your part before you can incapacitate him. But there are circumstances in which resistance is the better option.

For example, any attempt on the robber's part to move people into a back room, stockroom, walk-in refrigerator, etc. is a bad sign. In Washington state, for example, forcing a person to move "to facilitate commission of any felony or flight thereafter" constitutes first-degree kidnapping (RCW 9A.40.020), and the law is similar in many other states (which is why bank robbers typically instruct people to "get on the floor"). If a robber or robbers start moving people to a "secondary location," thus risking kidnapping charges on top of everything else, there is a serious risk they intend to leave no witnesses. One example f this happening is the "Brown's Chicken massacre".

Another signal that it's time to stop complying and start resisting is if the robbers shoot someone. Once the first victim does, all the robbers are complicit in first-degree murder, which will carry the heaviest penalty the state can impose (death or life without parole, depending on the state). At that point, there's no reason not to kill everybody present and leave no witnesses. If that sounds familiar, it's what happens in the first robbery in the film Heat.

In these circumstances, even though you may have little to gain, you very likely have nothing to lose. Having a firearm in those circumstances will at least improve your chances.
 
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