Guns are a dangerous article, no matter how you handle them. Allowing all kinds of people access will certainly control the population, but it makes the policing job harder, not easier. I do not understand all this affection for guns. Never have.

Have I used a gun? Yes. Did it make me feel powerful, did I enjoy it? No. It was just necessity, and I hated having to use it. (On an rabid animal, by the way, so it made me feel like a bully, too.)

There are limited circumstances that need one, and it's not useful in most instances.

I understand the feeling, but if it was in the latter stages, the disease had destroyed the brain. Mentally and intellectually, it was already dead. If you believe in the concept, you simply released its soul.

No, that is the only humane thing to do to an animal in such a state.

To have left it alive would have been unfair to both the animal, and anything it may have infected.

Why do you think that should even be a consideration?

In part, because those who talk most about the constitution haven't read it, in my experience.

The gun laws in Florida seem to be written to let the police off the hook for random violence. If the police are conscientious, it doesn't. If they aren't, it's a recipe for disaster.

"Allowing all kinds of people access will certainly control the population..."

You seem to imply that the gun-owning population will "control the population". Presumably through wanton, uncontrolled murder...? Nasty, accusatory, and empirically untrue.


"...but it makes the policing job harder, not easier."

So what? "...keep and bear arms..." is a Constitutional Right. It is not predicated on making anyone elses job easier or harder, if it actually does; evidence for which you have not demonstrated. If you want to take away/restrict access to an effective tool for my defense, you will need to compensate me somehow, at the least with more, and more effective, police presence. That will most certainly make the job of policing more difficult.


"I do not understand all this affection for guns. Never have."

I don't understand collecting Beanie Babies, or plates with paintings of Elvis, or some peoples affection for 60's/70's U.S. automobiles. Again, not relevent to a Constitutional Right.

The studies are all flawed! It's "anti-gun bias"! Don't trust those gun-grabbing ivory tower liberals with their "statistics" and "peer-reviewed science"!

My gun is my best friend! It would never hurt me! It keeps me safe! Guns don't kill people!

I'll agree that this isn't the best and most detailed presentation of the available evidence, but then it's an editorial and not a scientific survey. For more details see here:

http://www.iansa.org/system/files/Risks%20and%20Benefits%20of%20a%20Gun%20in%20the%20Home%202011.pdf

May as well posted something from MAIG while your at it too.

using gun blogs and the NRA?

If (since) you don't know what a peer reviewed study is, I recommend google.

Here are a couple of honest medical authorities talking about peer review:

Last edited Sun Apr 29, 2012, 12:54 AM - Edit history (1)

...too well. Why don't you go back look at it and see how many times the likes of VPC, Kellermen, and Lott are sited. That piece has been posted a few times here btw.

IANSA is the VPC/MAIG/Brady Campaign at the international level. Worse even.

IANSA is described as an umbrella network to which almost all national and regional gun control groups belong[9] and is estimated to represent over 800 gun control organizations in 120 countries.[10] IANSA opposes the use of firearms for self-defense.[9] It advocates prohibiting the private possession of many kinds of small arms, including semi-automatic rifles and handguns.[9][11] It advocates that private citizens undergo a licensing process before they can possess any remaining firearms, and that legally possessed firearms be stored unloaded and away from ammunition.[11]

This is the primary PROBLEM with the current academic system, not its greatness as many seem to think.

Running new ideas, past people who got to where they are on old ideas, and making academia a restrictive club is probably the worst idea anybody has ever had about ideas.

Remember Galileo.

Look, I get it. If I were pushing the NRA story, I wouldn't be a fan of peer review either...

Educate yourself a little and you, too, will start seeing the problems with the study.

....who swallows some study hook, line, and sinker without doing his own independent work.... So much failure. Look up the Frey Reports and the disbanded human rights sub-commission of the UN.

My own "independent work"? And I suppose you won't believe the theory of evolution until you personally have managed to dig up enough fossils to verify it independently? Of course, because what kind of gullible fool would trust those "peer-reviewed" science journals! It could just be an anti-creationism conspiracy funded by those evil evolutionists!

I tell you, the gungeon is home to some bizarre forms of scientific illiteracy and denialism.

And I notice how none of the head-in-the-sand NRA crew has even tried to make a substantive criticism of the article I posted. It's all about peer review and iansa and the UN.

Which makes sense. If you were capable of reading and reasoning critically about statistical evidence, you wouldn't be pro-gunners in the first place...

...seems to be the only skill set you posses. You own independent work would imply you do some background work on the study you posted. Starting with the citations would be good. Until then, you just keep owning that ignorance and be that "kind of gullible fool" who doesn't check the source material and believes everything that's written as long as it supports his anti-gun obsession....

....well...you're just screwed I guess.

Training costs out the ass....it takes lots of scratch to prepare for success that's for sure.

If we're ever to even out the numbers we need more people prepared and out there unwilling to become a victim.

I will write public policy that plays the odds with your life".

That'll work. Uh- huh.

Counting only justifiable homicides is bogus. If the DGU merely scares away the bad guy then it is a successful DGU, even if no shots were fired. My wife has used her gun twice, both times no shots fired, the would be attacker fled. You would not count those but I sure do.

A firearm does not need to kill, or even injure an assailant to stop or prevent an attack. Many times just showing the gun is enough for the person to run away.

pulling your gun out to show your armed is more likely to get your brains beaten from your brain. SHOOT FOR GOD SAKES, and not just once. Shoot twice!!!

but refrain from shooting if the attacker ceases upon seeing the gun.

Otherwise, it's murder.

A debate about an increase of justifiable homicides in FL?

Yet here we will only compare homicides to homicides to measure DGUs...
Is this a claim that civilians should shoot their attackers to show the benefits of gun use in FBI stats?

thought the same thing, and quit reading.

Its yet another example of "that gun is TOO accurate, that one isn't accurate enough, that gun is too long, too short, that gun is too....."

You logic is flawed. a + b do not equal c here.
One goomba with a gun, does not equal all gun owners are set with hare triggers ready to pop off any kid walking down the street.
This is such a ridiculous argument really...
I expect Democrats to be more sensible I suppose and it always disturbs me when the good guys get pulled in by all the rhetoric and sheer nonsense.

The bottom line now is and will always be. IT IS OUR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS FOR A VERY GOOD REASON. To protect ourselves from threats both foreign and domestic, and they are not referring specifically to wanting vagrants and drug addicts with faces like those of the most famous serial killers. The biggests domestic threat is our very own government gone horribly off the rail. Ya know, like now.... not even history, no no no,,,, like NOW NOW NOW NOW./

That price can help with your SD practice.