Quote from: One Horse Town;217526I hope everyone is happy that this was wheedled out and re-instated. Good job, internet crusaders.

Ironically, utter transparency from the very, very beginning would have eliminated the entire Streisand effect, and allowed the issue to be dealt with openly and within the bounds of the law. This is a police issue, not an admin issue, [edit]and definitely not a user issue![/edit]

Quote from: Engine;217528I'm a big fan of the .40 carrying frangibles for home defense, for a lot of these reasons, although I agree the psychological effect of the sound of a cocking shotgun is drastic.

I like the .40, and in fact don't really oppose the shotgun agreeing about the psychological effect. Under the right conditions, I think it's a excellent choice.

Quote from: Engine;217528Like you say, no one solution will work for everyone. As I said when someone recommended a handgun to me on the basis of its mechanical excellence, "Look, the 90 percent reduction in misfires doesn't matter at all if the gun doesn't fit in my hands properly, anyway."

Exactly.

The most important factor is to use a weapon you're familiar with, can shoot regularly with, maintain properly, keep at hand or nearby, and fits your personal needs.

There are some wonderful weapons out there that just don't like me. I can't hit with them or they are a trial to maintain or practice with. Those won't work for me no matter how wonderful they are for someone else. One should never depend upon something unless you know you can depend upon it- and have proven that to yourself.

Quote from: gleichman;217533I like the .40, and in fact don't really oppose the shotgun agreeing about the psychological effect. Under the right conditions, I think it's a excellent choice.

"The right conditions" being a big fucking house! Newer houses often have wider doorways and fewer, larger rooms. I always live in older homes, which tend to have slim doors, and many rooms in mazelike configuration. I've tried "clearing" my old house with something shotgun-sized, and it's just not practical. But I've been in some houses where a shotgun would at least be practicable. And, of course, living by yourself, and not having strangers staying the night, makes a big difference in how you choose to defend the house.

Quote from: gleichman;217533The most important factor is to use a weapon you're familiar with, can shoot regularly with, maintain properly, keep at hand or nearby, and fits your personal needs.

Now there's a reason I like baseball bats: not only can I easily use them non-lethally - much harder to do with a shotgun! - but you don't have to keep them oiled and cleaned.

Since this topic is epically derailed with bullshit drama, I feel much less disturbed by bending its intent.

Home defense. It's not just about what weapon you carry, and in fact, if it gets to weapon choice, you've failed at everything before. I cannot recommend highly enough having a visible and all-encompassing security system which everyone in your household, and no one outside your household, is well-trained in the use of. I think making good friends with your neighbors helps a great deal, as well; the right pair of eyes looking in your backyard at night it worth any ten shotguns.

And then there's attitude, reputation; this depends strongly on how local your criminals are, but if you can rep as a criminal, and as the sort of criminal with whom other criminals do not fuck, you can get away with an enormous amount. But this requires some knowledge of the B&E artists in your neighborhood, who are often from a culture other than your own. Knowing those cultures, and exposing not only yourself to them, but them to you, can stop many a prospective burglar before they even case you.

Clear, open, transparent and utter poverty is a huge deterrent. If everyone around you, and all the people who work your neighborhood, know full well you have nothing worth stealing, they're tremendously less likely to bother with the black gloves and home invasion.

At the end of the day, though, there are those people who don't give a fuck. They'll know you, know you have nothing to take, know you have a security system, and they'll still come up in your shit in the middle of the night, often hopped-up and irrational and apathetic. Here's where the bat - or firearm, if you swing that way - comes into play, as a tool not to deter them - you're past that point now! - but to disable them until you can restrain them.

Speaking of which, weapons are of very little use at all - unless you're just planning to kill a man, which I don't recommend in case of home invasion - if you don't have restraints. I have a pair of flat black Smith & Wesson cuffs I keep convenient to the most likely pinchpoint in the house, and I recommend them. Leg irons wouldn't hurt, either, but really, there comes a point when you're just being paranoid. [Okay, that point is probably before cuffs and bats and alarms, but it all depends on where and how you live.]

A note about purchasing handcuffs: perhaps surprisingly, nearly all modern cuffs use the same key, a very simple affair which can easily be reproduced with a paper clip. Not only does this mean you can't cuff someone and then wander off - you need to keep an eye on them so they don't pull a key or a wire - but it also means you want to be kind of careful about where you carry your key. I carried mine in my wallet for a long time, until an officer searching me noted its distinctive shape pressed into the leather and looked dubiously at me. I've found since then that full disclosure of such things is by far the best way to go.

Quote from: Engine;217496We should also all keep in mind that there are many reasons to own a firearm that have nothing to do with home protection.

I agree. My post was in response to the post by Werekoala where he said that the Conservative/Liberal gun divide was about taking personal responsibility for your own protection. Having a gun in your home to protect you against intruders is about as rational a personal safety precaution as cloaking your property in mosquito netting to avert West Nile virus. Probably less so, as comparatively few people are killed in mosquito netting accidents.

QuoteI tried to explain that the police aren't always there, that many families I know would starve if they could not hunt, that many farmers in my area need varmint rifles to protect their crops and livestock, and she just had no idea what I was on about.

Lots of Australians and Canadians use firearms to hunt and to protect livestock. And yet, guns aren't anywhere near the political issue in those countries as they are in the U.S. In Canada, guns inspire about as much passion as chainsaws. So the question remains: why are guns such a volatile issue in the U.S., and why do American conservatives regard guns as far more than just rural household tools?

QuoteI'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and, rather than dismiss this as inflammatory nonsense, ask: what gives you this impression? .

Read the post re: home protection that I was responding to. Given the extreme rarity of home invasions (unless you're a drug dealer), the frequency with which American conservatives go on about protecting their families suggests they get something out of those fantasy scenarios; manliness, a sense of power, fidelity to mythic values, etc.

Quote from: gleichman;217502Such statistics are very debatable and of course don't include things that aren't tracked and reported- up to and including crime deterred by the very existence of weapons and crime inspired by their absence.

Uh, how does that housebreaker know whether the home he's targeting has guns inside?

QuoteIMO, the issue that can be debated here is not so much what the statistics say or don't say- but the principle of the concept. Do or do I not have a right to defend myself, my family and my property or not?

Sure you do. You also have the right to cover your home and body in mosquito netting to protect yourself from West Nile virus. But you should expect ridicule from outsiders when you do so, along with some questions about why, exactly, you choose to take such a marginal threat so seriously.

Quote from: Haffrung;217557Having a gun in your home to protect you against intruders is about as rational a personal safety precaution as cloaking your property in mosquito netting to avert West Nile virus. Probably less so, as comparatively few people are killed in mosquito netting accidents.

:worship:

Quote from: Haffrung;217557Lots of Australians and Canadians use firearms to hunt and to protect livestock. And yet, guns aren't anywhere near the political issue in those countries as they are in the U.S.

I don't know how one might go about measuring the degree to which something is a political issue, but both Australia and Canada have seen massive changes to their gun laws in recent decades, and those changes have been very strongly debated. Still, I see your point, but I wonder if it's not an issue of the higher rate of violent crime in the US, and the protection of arms in our Constitution. It's much harder for the US government to restrict firearms ownership the way Canada and Australia have done.

Quote from: Haffrung;217557So the question remains: why are guns such a volatile issue in the U.S., and why do American conservatives regard guns as far more than just rural household tools?

They've read the Constitution? I don't know how gun ownership became a conservative platform, and gun control a liberal one, but I think it has a lot to do with the rural/urban divide, and the individual/collective divide, between conservatives and liberals.

Quote from: Haffrung;217557Given the extreme rarity of home invasions (unless you're a drug dealer), the frequency with which American conservatives go on about protecting their families suggests they get something out of those fantasy scenarios; manliness, a sense of power, fidelity to mythic values, etc.

I think you have utterly misinterpreted a political talking point - "We must have guns for home protection!" - into a caricature that fits well with your view of conservatives. This is like saying Liberals want to take your guns because they get sexual satisfaction out of subsuming the individual to the collective; it's really just an inflammatory way of not thinking about the issue itself, as a thing.

Quote from: Haffrung;217560But you should expect ridicule from outsiders when you do so, along with some questions about why, exactly, you choose to take such a marginal threat so seriously.

How marginal is the threat? [Of home invasion, not West Nile. ]

Quote from: Haffrung;217560Uh, how does that housebreaker know whether the home he's targeting has guns inside?

He makes an educated guess that involved the local gun laws, local culture, likely target (if they have an elect Obama sticker in the yard, the chance of an armed owner drops). All sorts of things.

Asking that question today is like asking why worry about your kid being tracked home when online. There are lots of ways.

As for it being rare, I've already said that I'm not up for debating that. As a past victim, as a neighbor of other victims, I feel I don't need to. I've seen far too much of it to debate how rare it is (and none of west nile for what it's worth).

Its all well and good to quote statistics and likelihoods when you're not one of the relatively few victims, 'innit?

Quote from: gleichman;217589He makes an educated guess that involved the local gun laws, local culture, likely target (if they have an elect Obama sticker in the yard, the chance of an armed owner drops). All sorts of things.

And this sounds - forgive me - like bullshit to the uninitiated, but I promise you, with every amount of trust one can have for a stranger on the internet, that this is precisely the sort of value judgment a criminal makes before attempting a home invasion. This is why many states have elected to open their concealed-carry laws, allowing many more people to take the classes and legally carry, and the effect that has on violent crime is breathtaking. Every single state in the US that has gone this route has experienced a radical decrease in violent crime, except New Jersey, which experienced a radical decrease in its rate of increase, which is about the best you can hope for in Jersey.

Quote from: gleichman;217589As for it being rare, I've already said that I'm not up for debating that. As a past victim, as a neighbor of other victims, I feel I don't need to.

People from Canada don't understand violent crime in the United States, because there aren't any black people in Canada.

I kid, I kid! Sort of. But it's only okay when we joke about it, so don't you all start.

There's another reason for that too - people tend to be less violent in colder climates. On average Canada's climate is colder than America's climate.

 You don't hear about violent riots in Alaska, Finland or Norway - do you?

The angry people that might protest or "riot" usually say the equivalent of "FUck it! Its to freezing cold to protest(riot) Lets just releease a statement and pretend we succeeded."


(And yeah there are studies that back this up, but I forget the exact phasing to google it)

- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;217600You don't hear about violent riots in Alaska, Finland or Norway - do you?

Well, in Alaska that's just because two angry drunk guys - which is to say, the entire population of the state - do not a riot make.

Quote from: Koltar;217600There's another reason for that too - people tend to be less violent in colder climates. On average Canada's climate is colder than America's climate.

 

Yeah, that's why there's hardly any violent crime in Russia.

I grew up in a house full of guns.  My dad is a avid gun collector, with guns from many historical periods.  The majority of his collection is guns from the "Wild West" period -- he has a dozen Colts from the late 19th century, including a 1874 Colt Peacemaker (that's the second year they were made, its the most valuable gun in his collection) -- but he also has a lot of rifles and pistols he bought around the world, including a Boer war era rifle he smuggled out of South Africa.

As I was growing up, there were a lot of rules about guns in the house.  I knew the basics of gun safety backwards and forwards by age six, and never had an issue with confusing guns with toys (all guns are loaded always!).  I also learned to shoot by age 8, and was loading my own black powder weapons by age 10.

Let me tell you something:  Beinga  revolutionary war era soldier must have SUCKED ASS.  Jesus Christ are black powder muskets the noisiest, smelliest, nastiest smoke-spewing, shoulder busting inaccurate piece of crap ever.  Seriously, spend a day firing off some black powder muskets and you'll understand why that whole "Line up and march towards their guns." tactic was not nearly as suicidally stupid as it seems.  Somedays I think the safest place to be in relation to a musket is directly in front of it.

My personal preference is for the Vietnam era weapons my dad had.  M-16s kick ass.  I needed my dad to stand behind me and hold onto my arms when i fired that thing until I was 13.

My dad isn't a conservative.  He's not really a liberal either, though he votes Democrat when he others to vote.  His politics run more towards paranoid survivalist.  He's not conservative so much as he is deeply cynical about the ability of politics to effect positive change.  'Nam vet, kind of disillusioned by his four years in special forces.

I'm definitely not conservative.  I'm pretty much a middle of the road liberal.  Love guns though.  It's not really about home defense or anything, I just enjoy shooting, and I've been around them so much that I can't imagien not having them around.  I mean, as an only child, someday I'm going to inherit my dad's whole collection, which already includes his dad's whole collection, plus my other grandad's collection (my uncle who owns it currently has said he's giving it to me and not his son, since his son doesn't care and I'm the family gun nut now, I guess).  So currently I own four guns, and by the time I'm an old grey beard myself I'll own...jeez, close to a hundred and fifty guns.

Fuck, I never really thought about that before.  I may have to sell a lot of those.  Suck.

My guns aren't anything impressive.  I have a small Chinese .22 pistol, it's the sort used in the Olympics for target shooting.  Very accurate.  I also have a Ruger .22, that's the most accurate gun I've ever owned, and the one I used to shoot cigarettes in half with.  Then I have a silly bolt-action .22 long barrel rifle for hunting squirrels, that's a beginners training gun.  Then I have my 30.06.  That's for hunting anything that's bigger than a squirrel.

My dad has used his guns for home defense.  I remember one time there was this crew of Mexican laborers who we kept finding on our property -- they were driving up from another house nearby to check if anyone was home.  The first time my dad accepted their "We took a wrong turn." excuse.  The second time we found them up there we were returning home and they were wandering around our garage looking through my dad's stuff. My dad showed them the gun he keeps in his truck and they took off.  The third time they drove up right after my step-sister had driven off, thinking no one was home.  That time my dad took his biggest, nastiest looking rifle, we hopped in our truck, and followed them down to their worksite.  Then he stuck the rifle in the site foreman's chest and told him the next time we found these dudes on our property, dad was coming down to the site and he was going to shoot the foreman.  Never saw those guys again.

I once stopped a rape in progress with a gun, but it wasn't my gun.  I just found it in the den of the guy who was throwing the party.  There was five guys who were standing around having a conversation about how they were going to fuck this chick who had passed out drunk, and when they got up to start undressing her, I got up and went for the gun.  Man, you should have seen their faces when I said "Step away from the girl."  It would have been totally badass if I hadn't been 14 and so fucking scared I was crying.  See, I found the gun, but hadn't actually been able to find bullets, and was terrified someone would figure that out.  In fact, I even passed on the revolver I'd found and went with the rifle simply because you can't tell if a rifle if loaded by looking at it.