I don't think shooting someone is a solution to crime, thats daft. When you shoot them you have no idea of their motives or past. You can't decide whether someones life isn't worth anything because you simply have no idea. People don't commit crime because they are crazy and just love to kill and cause harm, they want something, if you deny that you are deluded. Yes there are plenty of exceptions to this, but the main reason for crime is money and revenge.
There are more motives for crime than just the desire to cause harm. People can be pushed into it. Its like arguing that all prostitutes choose to be prostitutes and that they could get a job if they didnt. They can't, and some people are forced into crime and left with no way out, they don't deserve to die because they don't have the choice of anything else.
Joe
well perhaps you are willing to chance being stabbed or shot in hopes that an armed assailant will merely take your wallet and run away... but i won't.... i think you are way off on your assessments of the motivations for violent crimes... sometimes they will kill you just to leave no witnesses... that's just one of many reasons why you may well not be left standing after such an encounter, and if you deny this well it's you who are deluded my friend. gamble with your own life if you like, but you seriously should not reasonably expect anyone else to take those chances. and what if you're not alone, but with a girlfriend and/or child and/or elderly parent? would you gamble their lives as well on the charity of an armed robber?
you were clearly not exposed to guns much in your life and taught to fear them. here in the US many of us are raised with guns and taught gun safety and marksmanship from a young age. Guns are not the cause of evil in this world, but they are an instrument used by evil men, and they will never go away now. nor will knives or clubs, so i expect to be allowed the privilege (and yes it should be an earned privilege, as per having a clean criminal record, etc.) to defend myself with a legally owned handgun as a law-abiding citizen. it is lunacy to entrust your and your family's safety to the "kindheartedness of the poor criminal that just needs to feed his poor family", as surely as it is delusional to expect police or anyone/anything else to magically manifest at the exact right time and place to keep you safe without your having to take one iota of responsibility for said safety upon your own shoulders.
case and point, in 1990 i had to draw my concealed firearm (a Ruger P89 9mm) to stave off an attack by 4 suspected gang members upon a teenage girl(my 18 yr. old girlfriend), her 20 year old female friend, and... after i spoke up... myself. they were encircling us in a deserted corner alcove of mine and the young lady's apartment complex, having followed the girls from the pool area to our apartment. this happened near the outskirts of the infamous "Suitcase City" area of Tampa. i first verbally warned them to move away and leave the premises.. this merely caused them to get more agitated and to focus more on me than the girls, which is exactly what i wanted. then i warned them that i would defend myself and the girls and that their best option was to leave.... two of them took off their shirts and one drew a knife... at that point i immediately drew out my handgun. they couldn't get into their car fast enough at that point. i never saw them again. there were no police to help me, no reasoning with the men, and no cell phones to call 911 with (it was 1990 after all)... they weren't menacing us in order to feed their poor starving families..... this is the real world my friend... sometimes people are just bad. but to be honest, i'm not willing to even try to find out their personal circumstances, if i'm attacked and have no other option, i reserve the option to perforate a torso or two if it will save me or anyone else from potential injury. in the above case i only had to draw my weapon... i never even aimed it, it stayed pointed at the ground. i hope i'm never involved in anything like the above situation again, and the odds are that i will not be..... but i don't fancy the chances of the lowlife that skews those odds against me.
YOU are responsible for you own safety and for that of your family. Police are only obligated to investigate after the fact, should you or your loved ones be attacked or killed.
Andy has a good friend who's face got cut up terribly in the UK... by a girl to whom he had, IIRC, merely made a suggestive statement... i mean, she could have simply taken it as a compliment, or just told him to piss off.. but rather she violently attacked him with a blade. this happened in the UK.... he had to have gangs of surgery, if memory serves.... do you suppose that vicious young lady was merely out to feed her family? i'm not suggesting that she should have been shot for this, merely pointing out yet another instance of violent crime NOT stemming at all from some "dire need" and being a "poor starving soul trying to provide for a family" or other such bollocks.
bottom line is it's not your responsibility to determine a criminal's circumstances, it is only your responsibility to protect yourself and your family, should the need arise, however you feel you can. i personally choose the option, should i ever again need to, to do so with the strongest force available to me by law.... i do NOT want to be getting into fist fights with muggers, and CERTAINLY i do want to be in a knife fight.
cheers to you for your all-inclusive, circumstances-independent social conscience... mine, and i think quite wisely, kicks in AFTER a violent criminal is captured alive.. then and only then is it truly prudent to give two shits about their safety or extenuating circumstances.
One to the knee should do it. Then call cops. Unless shit really gets crazy.
yeah, not a good idea... if you take a CCL course, your instructor will clearly tell you, do NOT attempt to shoot to wound... aim for center body mass. otherwise you risk the assailant attacking you anyway, even if you manage to hit the knee, which is far harder to hit in a frightened state than the torso.
Yep, you are right in a certain regard. Some might be more disposed to crime than others, but I'm not really interested in seeing the figures.
At the time of the attack, they are a criminal to me. If they intend on a violent attack or robbery, then the defense mechanism kicks in and I'll defend accordingly.
-Joe
amen
The only drawback I can see to the state having control over who is and who isn't entitled to ownership of firearms is a potential (though unlikely) long-term plan to disarm the citizenry. In a very unlikely scenario, the state could choose to slowly phase out domestic gun ownership by gradually enforcing more and more stringent criteria, until finally no reasonably normal person could pass it.
it's not so unlikely... this exact scenario has played out many times in history.
