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Originally Posted by smooth
While the scenario you described is certainly tragic, I think it's important to seperate causal inference from speculation.
You premise this paragraph on the assumption that the couple was killed because they were unarmed, and later that others in the area weren't armed. I want to point out that neither you nor I will ever know if the situation would have been different had the people been armed. We also don't know how this relates to the millions of people robbed without being killed--possibly because they weren't armed, or possibly due to luck or whathaveyou.
The only causal statement we can accurately make, with certainty, in this scenario is that the couple died as a result of someone being armed with a gun. So while your statements seem to make sense, and resonate with myself and no doubt others, they can not be made to relay a truth from this story. There is no overarching moral to this story suggesting that armed victims or populace would have de-escalated the situation you described. The speculations confirm your suspicions, but that's about all they do in this situation. Not much to be done about it, it's not as though we can really do a pre and post test of these kinds of interations--so we need to look to quasi-experimentation and see what the literature says rather than create social policy as a response to heartwrenching stories and speculation on what could have changed the interaction.
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I realize that I can't make any sort of definitive statement, but had the people been armed, they may have at least have had a chance to fight back and survive.
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Originally Posted by Kadath
Well, part of me says the emphasized section above is true, in that it is never necessary to own a luxury car; it is simply something you desire for comfort. The other part of me rails against the idea that you could compare the necessity of a car to that of a firearm.
However.
Thanks to the concerted and untiring efforts of the gun lobby in protecting the Second Amendment to the Constitution, you are free to carry a gun. As I am free not to. Let us live and let live...especially the one of us with a weapon.
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I will live and let live, unless someone is refusing to do the same for the rest of us. If I came across a person attacking someone in a way that could only be stopped with lethal force, I would not hesitate to use such force to save an inocent life.
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Originally Posted by questone
Funny, we have all these Patriot Act laws and we are fearful of terrorism but we want to arm the whole population.
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Numerous suicide bombers in Israel have been prevented from carrying out attacks against civilian targets by those who legally carry concealed weapons. The terrorists who have attacked us in the past have targeted and killed civilians; very rarely does a person who legally owns a gun use it to massacre the innocent.