Should we repeal the 2nd Amendment?

[acbytesla]

It was counter to your argument that most people who carry are sensible about not getting into arguments. I'm sorry, but the evidence does not support that, and your anecdote about how people behave at a gun range is not representative of any situation outside that unique environment.

I'm not sure if he's wrong. "Most" people that carry guns are sensible. But I don't believe for one second the population of people that carry firearms are any more sensible than people that don't.

And even if "most" are more sensible, they don't make up for the ones that aren't and kill someone in an argument.

 

[jt512]

I did, thank you

You did not have time to look to any sort of look-up except, possibly, in the most superficial manner imaginable.

 

[jt512]

It was counter to your argument that most people who carry are sensible about not getting into arguments. I'm sorry, but the evidence does not support that...

Your "evidence," the news, reports only...wait for it...newsworthy events. Two people who avoided confrontational behavior because they had reason to believe the other party was armed is not news; indeed, it is not even an identifiable event.

 

[Thermal]

That sounds completely insane to me. Risking your life on the chance that you are more of a bad ass than the person who pulled a gun on you!

I think you wildly misunderstand who has put who's life at risk. When someone points a weapon your way, you need to assume they intend to kill you and will, unless someone stops them, and that someone is you. I mean sure, you can have them read at your eulogy "he meekly submitted, and was gunned down like a timid rabbit". Some would rather not go down so resignedly.

Better if neither of us has a gun.

Oh hell ya, agreed. But we are not there yet, nor will we likely be for years to come. So we play today's hand.

 

[acbytesla]

Your "evidence," the news, reports only...wait for it...newsworthy events. Two people who avoided confrontational behavior because they had reason to believe the other party was armed is not news; indeed, it is not even an identifiable event.

You're right. It isn't. But so what?

People kill others with guns whether they are armed or not. I would much rather live in a world where everyone isn't armed as opposed to one where everyone is. I'd rather the mentally ill or people with anger problems don't resolve their issues with firearms.

I would rather my favorite barista wasn't shot dead because the customer didn't like how was treated the day before at the Cafe Racer.

 

[Doubt]

Had you looked up "force-on-force training," which, of course, you did not, you would have learned that the training pits students, who do unpredictable things, against each other, so that the training teaches how to improvise and react to unanticipated situations. That's, actually, kinda the whole point.

Okay, I will answer this one. I was a national guard infantry officer and was an active duty combat engineer before that. What I have seen of civilian tactical training has been pretty stupid. I don't want any of those people I have seen on youtube anywhere near me with a gun. The Shoot room training ones being the worst and the instructors did not seem to be any better than the students.

Tactical situations are hard and the skills are not like riding a bicycle. If the training isn't recent then the reactions by the previously trained person won't be good. And even then, when I was training for this, I saw my fellow professional soldiers make lots of mistakes.

The end result of a good tactical training system would be one that makes the trainee try to avoid getting into any sort of shooting situation unless there was no other choice. And then they should understand that they will be making tactical situations with incomplete information. That is how tactical situations happen. And it is how it becomes very easy to end up shooting at the wrong person.

 

[arthwollipot]

You did not have time to look to any sort of look-up except, possibly, in the most superficial manner imaginable.

Well, I already had a good idea of what force-on-force training meant - we do the same in swords, though we don't call it that. I just needed to assure myself that we were talking about the same thing. What you describe is still a tremendously contrived and unrealistic situation.

 

[jrhowell]

When someone points a weapon your way, you need to assume they intend to kill you and will, unless someone stops them, and that someone is you.

That is far different from the scenario you presented earlier and to which I responded.

Eta: also, a mugger or rapist doesn't always want to murder, or even fire the gun to draw attention. He just wants to get compliance.

 

[Thermal]

That is far different from the scenario you presented earlier and to which I responded.

... it's...um...the same scenario, there, Baba Louis. Just because someone doesn't want to shoot you and only wants compliance does not at all mean he will not shoot you, and your life is not in very real jeopardy. This isn't that complicated.

 

[jrhowell]

... it's...um...the same scenario, there, Baba Louis. Just because someone doesn't want to shoot you and only wants compliance does not at all mean he will not shoot you, and your life is not in very real jeopardy. This isn't that complicated.

Of course there is a chance you will be killed either way. I prefer not to carry a gun on the off chance that someone might pull one on me and I will be able to react more quickly than that person in the heat of the moment. To me that is the more reasonable way to live my life instead of always trying to be prepared for a very unlikely scenario.

And it would be even better if it was much more difficult for that potential assailant to have a gun themself. To me that is the safe and sane approach.

 

[arthwollipot]

Did you hear about the woman in Florida who shot at cars on the freeway during the eclipse because God told her to? How the hell did she get a gun?

Answer: They weren't allowed to keep it from her.

 

[jt512]

Well, I already had a good idea of what force-on-force training meant - we do the same in swords, though we don't call it that. I just needed to assure myself that we were talking about the same thing. What you describe is still a tremendously contrived and unrealistic situation.

You still don't that because you still haven't investigated what I was talking about.

 

[jt512]

Okay, I will answer this one. I was a national guard infantry officer and was an active duty combat engineer before that. What I have seen of civilian tactical training has been pretty stupid. I don't want any of those people I have seen on youtube anywhere near me with a gun. The Shoot room training ones being the worst and the instructors did not seem to be any better than the students.

I have never seen a "shoot room training" video. The force-on-force training videos I've watched have all been taught by ex-military, often former special forces. People who would likely have been training you in the infantry.

 

[jt512]

And in the very unlikely situation where you might be facing a violent criminal there's a high probability that you'll just get yourself killed.

But, as Thermal has been trying to explain, the probability that you'll get killed facing a violent criminal is higher if you don't have a gun.

 

[arthwollipot]

I have never seen a "shoot room training" video. The force-on-force training videos I've watched have all been taught by ex-military, often former special forces. People who would likely have been training you in the infantry.

And that would be great if it were required before getting a gun license. It isn't. And there are certainly people who would rail and bluster and argue about mandatory anything where their guns are concerned.

 

[arthwollipot]

But, as Thermal has been trying to explain, the probability that you'll get killed facing a violent criminal is higher if you don't have a gun.

The probability of getting killed facing a violent criminal is higher if the criminal has a gun.

 

[jt512]

And that would be great if it were required before getting a gun license. It isn't.

Firearm training requirements for a CCW differ by US state. Here in Cali, 16 hours of training is required; the waiting time for the permit is around 9 months; you have to have three letters of recommendation; and you have to pass a background check, a police interview, and a marksmanship test. People who are willing to go through this process are responsible, serious people. I haven't seen statistics, but I doubt that California CCW holders are the ones responsible for unjustifiable shooting incidents in the state.

 

[jt512]

The probability of getting killed facing a violent criminal is higher if the criminal has a gun.

But the bad guys in the US have guns, and repealing the Second Amendment would not change that. It would just make it impossible for the good guys to legally get guns to be able to defend themselves against the bad guys.

There are a lot more bad guys in the US than in Australia, and our bad guys are a lot badder.

 

[PitPat]

Firearm training requirements for a CCW differ by US state. Here in Cali, 16 hours of training is required; the waiting time for the permit is around 9 months; you have to have three letters of recommendation; and you have to pass a background check, a police interview, and a marksmanship test. People who are willing to go through this process are responsible, serious people. I haven't seen statistics, but I doubt that California CCW holders are the ones responsible for unjustifiable shooting incidents in the state.

Actually they are one of the states of the fewest death rates by guns, impressive considering it's the most populated one. And generally enforced.

 

[Thermal]

The probability of getting killed facing a violent criminal is higher if the criminal has a gun.

Well yeah. And if everyone was a quardrapalegic the probability would go down too.

I looked at Australia's intentional firearm homicides earlier on the thread. You guys had about 400 annually. Ok, thought I, that's pretty low compared to our 12,500. But then I recalled that the US population is something like 16x larger, so that would make your comparable rate like 6,400, meaning that we are still about twice as likely to be killed by guns. Still not good. But we have one relatively small data-skewing demographic that murders at rate of 6x the general population, and largely kills others in its own demographic, and despite being small is doing the majority of homicides. If we could get that demographic's murder rate down to the rest of the population, the US and Australian firearms homicide rates would be about the same, and your sweeping gun regulations apparently meaningless.*

In the here and now, the odds of you, as a European Australian, and me, as a European American, of being murdered with a gun are almost identical. So I'm not entirely sure what you think you are winning, here.

* Your regs knock down the ability of potential school shooters to easily access weapons, which I wholly support. But in context here, it's not the point.