Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumAnother instance of a firearm protecting someone, this time from a stalker ex-boyfriend
Despite the new locks, the woman still did not feel safe. She called ADT Security to install a home security system. As the technician finished up the installation of the system on Tuesday, around 3 p.m., the woman went into her bedroom to grab her cellphone.
But the phone had vanished from where she’d left it. If there was a mystery to where it had gone, the reason was immediately — and alarmingly — apparent. A pair of feet poked out from underneath her bed. They were Gunter’s. That was when the woman thought she might die: It was his life or hers, as she would later tell WKRN News reporter Jessica Jaglois.
The woman drew a gun, shot Gunter in his left foot and told the ADT installer to dial the police. WZTV reported that she demanded the now-wounded Gunter give her back her phone, which he tossed to the woman from beneath the bed. She kept him there, weapon trained, until the authorities arrived. Police say he admitted to breaking into the house and stole the phone to prevent her from calling for help.
Link - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/24/fearing-ex-boyfriend-woman-installs-security-system-only-to-find-him-under-her-bed/?hpid=hp_rhp-moretopstories2_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
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Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)for the cops to arrive, how many people died as a result of gun violence, accident, and suicide in a country where the purchase of firearms by people who face little real threat of becoming the victim of violent crime has turned America's streets and living rooms into a cornucopia of death tools.
TeddyR
(2,493 posts)Would you prefer she had been unable to protect herself from an abusive ex who threatened to kill her?
And on edit, are you proposing that we limit firearms purchases to those at risk of violent crime? How do you determine who is or is not at risk?
jmg257
(11,996 posts)Guess she didn't want to take the chance of having to wait for the cops to come, IF she could have called them.
JonathanRackham
(1,604 posts)Not locked up. The justice system is inefficient and broken.
Suicide is a mental health issue and not a violent crime. That part of our system is also broken.
Some violent felons have their situation compounded with mental health issues (my youngest sisters area of practice); a double whammy for those individuals.
Some mental health issues (along with the crime) are created by individuals who self medicate.
Straw Man
(6,771 posts)for the cops to arrive, how many people died as a result of gun violence, accident, and suicide in a country where the purchase of firearms by people who face little real threat of becoming the victim of violent crime has turned America's streets and living rooms into a cornucopia of death tools.
Gun violence? Lots and lots, mostly at the hands of career criminals. Accident? Relatively few: they number in the hundreds per year in a nation of 320,000,000 with almost as many guns as people. Suicide? Overall US suicide rates are lower than those in the gun-free paradise of Japan, so arguably there are other factors involved than the availability of firearms.
The "purchase of firearms by people who face little threat"? I assume you're talking about people who purchase firearms for self-defense. These are overwhelming not the people who are perpetrating the violence.
"Death tools"? Really? You need some new clichés.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)When you increase the number of any item in the stream of commerce, you increase its availability to law abiding citizen and criminal alike. When paranoid suburbanites buy weapons willy nilly because they buy the "bad guy in the bushes" lie, they make it easier for real bad guys to find weapons.
DonP
(6,185 posts)... in spite of record high gun sales for the last few years. The whole more guns more crime thing just hasn't worked out the way some keep claiming.
Maybe your "Bad Guys" are just having trouble finding the right houses?
Straw Man
(6,771 posts)That's as succinct an explanation as I've ever heard of why the activities of all citizens should be restricted because of the behavior of thieves: in other words, absolute nonsense.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)Just asking for prospective gun purchasers to weigh costs vs benefits.
Straw Man
(6,771 posts)Just asking for prospective gun purchasers to weigh costs vs benefits.
The benefits are actual and immediate, and accrue to the individual. The costs are hypothetical and distant, and accrue (possibly) to the society at large.
But I'm glad to know that you're not here to advocate for gun control.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)More firearms than 99% of the posters on this site and am probably the only one with a 420 yard (topo, range finder said 390) elk. I have also had to take other people's lives. I know the balance.
My issue is only tangentially with guns, although the connection is admittedly undeniable. My issue is with this myth that the benefits of gun ownership are real. The people who are scarfing up guns like they are baseball cards while they sit out in their suburban enclaves are in virtually no danger. The only benefit they get is "freedom" from imaginary criminals who self-defense advocates have convinced them are right outside the door by telling colorful one in a million stories. That changes the balance substantially.
Straw Man
(6,771 posts)More firearms than 99% of the posters on this site and am probably the only one with a 420 yard (topo, range finder said 390) elk. I have also had to take other people's lives.
... do you consider yourself part of the problem?
Yet the criminal who steals a gun from them will do the same damage with it as he would with one he stole from you, and neither he nor the society he harms will care what the motivation behind buying it was or what the owner did with it before it was stolen.
People buy guns for a lot of reasons: hunting, collecting, target shooting, plinking/fun, and yes, self-defense. I'm not even sure self-defense is the top reason, but ultimately that's irrelevant.
What I'm hearing from you is that you think your gun ownership is justified while other people's is not.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)To be honest, that's pretty accurate. I, like hunters, sport shooters, etc,
have something on our side of the balance. The person who has bought the lie that "those people" are out to get them, have nothing.
Straw Man
(6,771 posts)If they have some peace of mind, that's something. And if they go to the range, they have the satisfaction of acquiring a skill, whether they're going to need it or not. Surely you can acknowledge that.
The fact is that "those people" -- thieves, ISIS, et al -- really are out to get them, although the statistical probability of "getting got" is pretty low.
sarisataka
(21,000 posts)Do you feel the Hawaii's action, entering all gun owners into an FBI criminal database http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141500502
should be the national norm?
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)That they just put FFL holder's books into a national database. We're not criminals.
ileus
(15,396 posts)Kind of like I don't mind having the ability to save my life, and my wife doesn't mind having the ability to protect her life. Hell for that matter my kids don't mind having the ability either.
Safety first, dying because you thinks it's the progressive way....never.
beevul
(12,194 posts)Why don't you E-mail her and give her an ass chewing for being so selfish, accuse her of having a small penis, and lay those who "died as a result of gun violence, accident, and suicide" at her feet, and let us all know how it turns out.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)These little antectdotes mean nothing when it comes to policy.
Let's assume her life was saved by shooting this scumbag. That is a plus for gun ownership. That plus, however, has to be weighed against the negatives of accidental death etc. The simple fact is that the incidents of defensive gun use in situations where there is an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death is a small fraction of unnecessary gun deaths.
beevul
(12,194 posts)I took it from the anti-gun playbook, fair play and all:
#1: ALWAYS FOCUS ON EMOTIONAL AND VALUE-DRIVEN
ARGUMENTS ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE, NOT THE POLITICAL
FOOD FIGHT IN WASHINGTON OR WONKY STATISTICS.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023396665
(I figured an emotional response was a good reply to an emotional statement, particularly satisfying, since I used your words, to have you accuse me of being emotional. That's just awesome.)
Another simple fact, is that 2/3 of unnecessary gun deaths are suicides and wont be prevented by gun control.
Uponthegears
(1,499 posts)Fair enough, fair enough
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)
LongtimeAZDem
(4,515 posts)ileus
(15,396 posts)
sanatanadharma
(4,074 posts)I accept that the woman (and many people in our world) was a victim of the evil of our machismo-boy-man dominated culture.
I am glad this story resolved as it did and that it exists to allow gun-lovers an occasional anecdotal story to counter the avalanche of anecdotal stories about our societal-sickness of gun violence, and the insanity of gun-love.
DISARM HATE
Other men were at her home.
She saw the perp's feet sticking out from the bed.
She had the advantage and was not in immediate danger of harm.
She shoots the foot.
She had the gun.
She could have backed away, held the gun on the perp, called out to the workers.
She did not have to shoot, but she did.
Seems to happen too often when people have guns; the NEED to shoot!
This gun-shoot-love disease is a public health problem in America.
Why does any one civilian need 6.5 TONS of ammunition?
Gun-shoot-love creates mental illness.
Or, perhaps mental illness makes people like guns.
Until our nation's leaders can figure out what is happening in our country with gun-lovers, perhaps we need to profile and quarantine them.
Owning a gun is OK. Loving guns is sick. Guns are not fetuses to be honored at all costs.
In future NRAterrorist controlled America perhaps everyone will be expected to be packing, paranoid and have fear of the other and reason to shoot fast and shoot often.
Right now it is only a minority of freaked out people who have chosen to live gun-love lifestyles.
Response to sanatanadharma (Reply #8)
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tortoise1956
(671 posts)You were there to see him abjectly surrender before she committed murder upon his poor defenseless foot?
Give me a break. This is a man who had violated orders of protection 3 times, and had 3 outstanding warrants - so, he was a wanted criminal. He was under her bed in the daytime, waiting for her. And you question her shooting him in the foot? What in the name of Murphy makes you think that he would have passively stayed on the floor if she hadn't shot him? Hell, in many states just the act of breaking in, especially with the history of violating protective orders, would be justification for killing him on the spot. The requirement is that you be in fear for your life, and this definitely meets that standard.
I'd be willing to bet that, in Nevada at least, the odds of the case even going to trial would be slim to none. No DA would want to be branded as the idiot who tried to convict a woman for killing a criminal stalker in her own bedroom...
bluestateguy
(44,173 posts)but it wasn't an AR-15 or a machine gun-lite, was it?
As long as she is law-abiding, she has every right to have that gun and protect herself, so good for her.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,577 posts)AR-15: Why would it matter?
Machine gun-lite: What's that?