blackshoe, on 2012-August-03, 15:41, said:
As a friend of mine used to say, criminals are stupid. They're also lazy. They may set out to rob a particular house, but if
anything goes wrong, they're likely to give up and go elsewhere. OTOH, criminals have been known to panic and make a bad (for them
and their victims) situation worse.
It is about as smart to buy a gun with no training as it is to buy a double-bitted axe to chop down the oak tree in your yard with no training. Either way, you're likely to end up in trouble.
For many people, knives are actually scarier than guns. That's one reason why that scene in
Crocodile Dundee is so funny ("That's not a knife.
This is a knife!"
)
Agree with all of this. The police told my landlady when she bemoaned not confronting people who broke into my house that she was very lucky she hadn't, and that anyone who got into a situation with a gun had better be prepared to use it effectively. Most people will have hesitation and that will allow the bad guys, if not to actually take the gun away and maybe use it or at least try to and who knows who will get shot in the struggle?
The scenario of a whole bunch of people in a crowded gas filled theatre pulling weapons and trying to shoot the gunman would likely delight the gunman as the carnage would undoubtedly have been much worse; including people shooting other people they THOUGHT were the gunman and perhaps then being shot themselves, and those would be the people who had some presence of mind and weren't just shooting blindly in panic.
OTOH not long ago a woman in Edmonton heard noises in her garage and had a legal handgun; she investigated and found a man with a crowbar who had broken into the place; she was quite capable of using her gun and the burglar very sensibly stood there and waited for the police to rescue him. The police were not happy with her but she was briefly a heroine to the community.
As far as a hope that the police and army would protect the citizens in a government/citizen conflict, or even a BUSINESS/citizen conflict there's not a lot of precendence for that..Kent State and the Chicago Dem. Convention and the use of police against coal miners and other striking workers suggests otherwise. What's happening in Syria seems FAR more likely, once things get to that stage.
In that case, having some sort of weapon might give a person some sense of security, thus all the survivalists talk about weapons and ammo stashes, but it's quite difficult for most people to grasp what that would actually mean. For one thing, if known, then those people will be the FIRST targets, (and likely labelled as terrorists).There's not much chance they would not be known to the authorities, either, hard to imagine it's not extremely easy to track who buys such things, especially in any quantity.
Given the latest mass shooting in Wisconsin, it seems to me that terrorism INSIDE the country ought to be given at least as much attention and resources as terrorism outside the country. It seems sometimes as though everyone conveniently forgets the first terrorist event in the US..the Oklahoma bombing... was done by an American.
I have no idea what the answer is..but surely something needs to be tried to prevent these people from reaching the state that this behaviour seems a reasonable way to act. I personally think children who grow up learning through video games, TV, movies and the political decisions by governments that killing is the best if not only way to resolve differences are going to have a very different attitude from those who have learned to see there are usually other routes to conflict resolution.
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