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Originally Posted by Willravel
Not necessarily. The option of avoiding dangerous areas is probably the single best way of protecting one's self. Like it or not, there are some places that are more dangerous than others. By not being at these places, especially at night, one can substantially reduce the threat to one's person. For example, walking down Monterey here in San Jose past maybe 11 p.m. isn't particularly safe. I don't walk that way. Sure, San Jose is one of the safest big cities in the world, and gun crime is quite low here, but there are dangers.
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I work in one of the most dangerous industrial areas in Phoenix. There is regular gang violence, there have been multiple shootings within a mile in the two years I've been there and I have seen a ten person brawl break out while eating at the nearby Chipoltle. I have no choice but to enter this area regularly, due to my employment, and I'm sure a very large swath of people work and live in and around the areas you deem dangerous. Avoiding them is not always an option.
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If tasers and mace weren't effective, I have to believe the police wouldn't use them. They do. A lot. The police use them a lot more often than their guns.
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If they were always sufficient, why do they use their guns at all? My whole argument is based not on statistical probability, but possible need. Every sane gun owner hopes to go his or her entire life without needed to draw.
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This does raise a question, though: how often is a perpetrator just looking to inflict harm? Robbery I can understand. If someone pulls a gun on me and demands my wallet, they're not looking to shoot me but take my money. They're welcome to it. How often, though, would an armed, dangerous perpetrator have the main goal of hurting or killing you? It's not rational except in cases of personal offense, which are easy to avoid. So, if we're to assume it's an irrational actor, this is an exceedingly rare individual. It's highly uncommon for someone to attack a person at random with the singular purpose of hurting or killing them.
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Uncommon does not equal impossible. You do not always have control of whether or not you personally offend someone. You could be a witness to a crime, you could rear-end or cut-off the wrong person, or you could simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You also could be an attractive female targeted for some single-party-consent mating. That's excluding possibilities of someone having a legitimate grudge against you for perfectly defensible reasons. If you were a witness against a gang crime, with your name and face plastered in the papers, would you then feel the need to start carrying?
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Where did the perpetrator get the gun?
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I'm not sure I understand...is this a call for the de-invention of the firearm?
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I said collateral danger, referring to the unintended danger of a higher rate of suicide and shooting a friend or family member I mentioned and cited above. Do you own a gun? Did you know it was dangerous in those ways?
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I do own guns. I do not feel it is more dangerous in those ways for the reasons I outlined. They are locked in a safe when it is not under my direct control, I do not point them at things which are not targets with safe backstops, and I keep my finger off the trigger except when firing. I fail to see the increase in danger to me and mine.
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They would be more inclined to return fire in order to protect their own life, using the same logic you're applying to the victim. Robber pulls a gun and demands money, victim pulls a gun and opens fire, and robber returns fire. After the first bullets are fired, both individuals are just trying to survive. If they both believe shooting at the other person, to kill them, is the best way of surviving, they're both shooting at each other. That's my logic.
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The aggressor is the only one who can end the conflict. No sane defender would continue the engagement if the aggressor was fleeing, whereas the aggressor, by definition, would.
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How often do you suppose someone is just out there to kill you? It seems the entire case of being armed with a gun is to be ready for a situation where someone is very likely to kill you if you don't kill them first. Really, how likely is this situation? As you say, when being robbed it seems the most logical reaction to simply cooperate and give the robber what he or she wants. I only have like $70 in my wallet, along with a debit card and a credit card. If I'm robbed in public, the most I lose is a few hundred bucks. If it's a home invasion, I've got a nice TV, stereo, and an okay computer. Go for it, I say. Take them. If it's my car, go for it. It's not worth killing for.
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If someone is in my house, they are welcome to anything on the ground floor. The only thing upstairs is me, my wife, and daughter, and coming up to that level indicates they aim to misbehave.
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So how often are these situations in which it's kill or be killed? And please, don't just link to a few isolated cases. That's how others have responded to this question in the past, but for every article featuring such a violent crime, there are hundreds of millions of people that are totally safe. I've been looking for statistical information on this for years, but I've never found any. Until we have it, I don't see how anyone can possibly say there's a real danger. As I've said in the past, risk is a combination of likelihood and severity. Sure, being murdered is quite severe, but if it's a rarity, as I believe, the risk isn't as high as people would have you believe.
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I state again: There is no cost to having a gun and not needing it, other than financial. The cost to not having a gun and needing one could be enormous.
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I got the shoot to kill thing from Dunedan and dksuddeth. I'm working under the assumption that they're both highly trained enough to know what is or isn't appropriate. If I misunderstood them or they're wrong, mea culpa.
If there is a situation in which it's not necessary to kill, I can't imagine a reason to pull a gun. Doesn't that make sense to you?
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There may be a difference in terms here. One meaning is when talking about shot placement, contrasting shoot to wound vs shoot to kill. Shooting to wound, that is limb shots, is both illegal and unethical, as it shows that you believe even at the time, that your application of potential lethal force was not justified. You should always take shots at spots which could possibly result in fatal wounding--center mass primarily, but also head and lower torso. However, it is not because you wish to kill the attacker--it is because these are the same spots most likely to stop the attack...that is, deliver enough immediate damage to stop the attacker, either by disrupting the nervous or skeletal system, injuring the attacker so gravely they do not wish to continue the attack, or rendering them dead or unconscious.
The difference between shoot to stop and shoot to kill as a philosophy is that, if you are shooting to stop, you stop shooting once there is no longer a threat...if the attacker throws down his weapon, or tries to flee, or is injured to the extent that he is no longer a threat.
If you are shooting to kill, you would have to keep shooting even if the attacker throws down their gun, lays on the ground and surrenders--otherwise you haven't met your stated goal. Again, this philosophy is both illegal and unethical, and I don't believe that, in the context I have laid out here, either dk_suddeth or Dunedan would advocate shoot to kill vs shoot to stop, barring some sarcastic machismo. I, however, also consider them expert sources, so if you have quotes to the contrary, I deem them admissible.
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A gun is clearly the preferred method of suicide. It's instantaneous and painless. Pills don't always work and hanging is torture. I will admit some people are willing to go through pain in order to carry out their suicidal impulses, but according to the statistics, they're clearly less likely to do it and less likely to succeed. That's no small thing.
You'd really want to suffocate instead of having it end instantly?
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Suicide by pistol, regardless of intended shot placement is also not always successful, despite movies depiction to the contrary (
Fight Club notably excepted). And yes, I would--your lungs have no 'sensors' for helium, like they do for carbon dioxide, so you get no sensation of suffocation, just a gentle drifting off on an oxygen deprivation high. Again with the other thread's topic, however.
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The point of that statistic is owning a gun comes with additional risks, among them the risk of being able to more easily commit suicide. Are we in agreement that suicide is generally a bad thing? (not being facetious)
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Impulsive suicide? yes, and that is decreased by having firearms locked. All suicide? Topic for another thread.
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What are the odds of finding one's self in a situation?
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Non-zero, which is all it has to be.
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I disagree. When you open fire on a legitimate target, there's always a chance, even if all proper safety procedures are followed, you hit someone or something you don't intend.
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There is a chance, yes. If you are not aware of your backstop, it is not safe to discharge your firearm. Using hollow-point bullets which do not over-penetrate and only taking shots at ranges you are accurate at can also help minimize stray bullets. At the point in which you engage in a gun battle, then the chances come in to play. There is a large chance you will die if you do not engage, or you shouldn't. There is a small chance someone else will get injured if you do, and that chance can be made smaller by backstop awareness and accurate shot placement. This is a fair trade--it is harder than the movies make it seem to intentionally kill someone with a pistol, it is almost completely unlikely to accidently do so. Like I said, I'd love to see an example of someone accidently shooting a bystander in self defense, compared to the amount of times the only casualty is the attacker.
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He was not a mortal risk to the police officers overusing the pepper spray.
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You even grant that the pepper spray was overused. Did the perpetrator look disabled to you? If that glass had been a gun, do you think he would have been unable to discharge it with reasonable accuracy at those ranges? Do you think if it had been a gun pointed at the officers, they would have approached so calmly and trusted the spray?