angelica

LMMFAO..he just probably mistook the mannequins for another bible thumping pole up the ass Midwesterners..just sayin'

Fotzlid

the report i read said he was just randomly shooting. probably a good thing he wasnt aiming. after all, he was a teen who probably played first person shooters before so it couldnt have been that difficult.

out of curiosity, have you ever been under fire and if so how did you react?

MzNadia

You and I could have wrote the same post. Agreed!

dlish

yeah..and then one rogue reporter will finally spill the beans and make the most money for doing the exclusive...

which reporter is going o put benjamins in someone elses pocket? of course they are gonna report his name and detail his life...

ure not a reporter if u dont

__________________
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I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

angelica

And probably made the scene ten times worse..

Do you really think a "lawfully armed citizen" would have been been able to accurately gauge where the shots were fired from, and not shoot randomly, possibly causing more harm than good? Gut reaction would have made this situation worse...in my opinion.

Infinite_Loser

Please. I'm not a troll in the least. So sorry I actually-- You know-- Bother to do a bit of research on things (Which, you know, appears to only be applicable when the majority wants it to be applicable. Oh well...).

*Ahem*

To quote myself from a couple of responses back:

See. I already acknowledged that fact a while ago. It doesn't exactly bother me, because there are statistics to back that claim up. Furthermore, I really don't care what you or anyone else thinks about what I have to say. Simply because you willingly choose to ignore it doesn't make it any less true. But, hey, whatever. Doesn't bother me in the slightest lol. Carry on

__________________
I believe in equality; Everyone is equally inferior to me.

Baraka_Guru

Wow did this thread get absurd ever fast.

Too many guns makes everyone crazy.

Adding more guns will solve the problem, right?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Willravel

So:
...is the result of research? That's a magnificent crock of shit, dude. It's baseless racism in the form of something that has nothing at all to do with the thread.
It's.
A.
Troll.

Baraka_Guru

Give it up, willravel. Infinite_Loser doesn't realize that White isn't even a race. It is a crisis of identity that can only be defined as a "race" to which all other races are compared. There is no other way to define Whiteness. He doesn't understand that, so he doesn't know what he's talking about.

But you're right about his research. He should tighten that up a bit.

What does this have to do with too many guns again?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

jorgelito

This is a thoughtful and interesting post, thank you roachboy. I think you could expand a bit more. I especially like your compare and contrast of your view and that of DKs. Perception does have a role to play and each one will have it's own narrative. At some point, these narratives will have to converge. I think it would be all how you frame it. There has to be something more endemic than just "guns" to the human experience. We are still a relatively young species; evolving, growing socially, mentally, and physically. Violence is very much a part of our nature (I know you hate that term roach, but lets use it and engage it). The point or frame of reference as a starting point in my mind would be: Everyone has guns and over time, some sort of detente, or deterrent effect would be achieved. No one has guns but then one person manages to get one and tips the balance of power. Etc..so on and so forth. I think an effective debate should start with these premises or something like it. I think current gun debates are overly simplistic and do not explore the issue enough in depth.

"white" also includes so called latino or hispanics, Arabs, Persians, etc Central Asians, North Africans, even south Asians,

Race truly is the dumbest label ever.

Yet people use this same type of logic all the time.

C'mon now Baraka, this is a cop out. You usually have awesome, well thought out posts (even though I don't agree alot). Surely you have something to add to the discussion?

albania

Is there any surprise that where there are humans there is human suffering? I can’t even honestly say I am fazed one bit anymore. It’s been the case that a type of malaise usually comes in tandem with the report of news such as this, and maybe hint of that feeling like right before you throw up. Luckily, though, that goes away pretty quick when I see what else is on TV; I don’t know whether to call that growing up or giving up.

Baraka_Guru

You know, you're right. I was simply disappointed by such follow-up to roachboy's engaging posts, which I hoped would have geared up a decent thread. The thread not only fell into the usual gun rut, but now we have the usual race thing going on, too.

What?

Seriously. I hope roachboy responds to you, and I will continue reading. I don't usually add anything at length unless I see it adding something of value. I didn't see the point in doing so yet.

But thanks for calling me out. I appreciate it. I just think it's pointless to try and oppose things like the what-if scenarios we see here all the time. Roachboy is right. They're a bit silly. And the race thing I didn't want to touch at all, but I saw the opportunity to point out that absurdity in a concise fashion.

Thanks, jorgelito, but I'll await roachboy's response to your legitimate concerns before seriously engaging. I suppose I often make the mistake of letting others engage with his posts instead, but since I tend to agree with him or learn something from him, I'm not sure it would be a debate so much as a concerted treatise.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

MSD

I wouldn't run toward gunshots, if they were out of sight I would be trying to get people away from there. If a situation unfolded in which I could reasonably expect my actions to save lives, I would take action; in the unlikely circumstance that I was in line of sight of the shooter and felt that I could end a shooting spree by taking him down, I would do so quickly and decisively, then get back to doing whatever I could to make sure innocent people didn't die.

I find Rambo and vigilante fantasies as absurd (and frequently disturbing) as non-gun-owners.

roachboy

i had thought about posting something further, jorgelito, but accidentally put that one up and then wandered away to do something else--when i got back, i read some of the stuff that followed and got disgusted with the thread. most of the gun toting fantasies i read seemed to me funny until i began to think that folk seriously imagined they'd act that way in 3-d, at which point they just seemed psychotic. that lead to one of those "who the fuck are these people?" moments...

now the ringing in my ears from a show is loud enough that i dont think i can sleep quite, so i checked in. glad to see your posts and barakas...

one other preliminary--the post i put up was cut up, so the direction i was heading in got blurred.
=========

i wasn't so much thinking about guns and gun fantasies per se---i was thinking about no. 50 because i dont remember reading anything from dk that tipped the written persona to the side a little and gave a glimpse of dispositions/background, which i thought opened up another way of thinking about, well, politics first and then responses to stuff like the mall shooting second (there's little difference, really, apart from scale).

alot of politics is about projection--people gather/cut up/organize information around frameworks that "fit"--and this fit seems often to have more to do with temperment, dispositions and experience than argument---it seems that what makes argument compelling past a certain point is this sense of fit--which means that political premises are evaluated aesthetically, not logically. or rather, that these aesthetic evaluations and logical evaluations get tangled up--the degree of entanglement is a function of self-awareness.

i'm interested in what motivates people to order their understanding of "the world"--which is everything outside their immediate experience--as they do.


why is it that someone would imagine a compensatory scenario about something like the mall shooting and would project themselves into the position of a guy with a gun who was in a position to start shooting?

why would i immediately project myself into a role as someone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

at one level, the former is obvious: to take 50 as a point of departure because i found it interesting.... the fantasy is about control, its compensatory character derives from a fear of chaos, it seems background functions to generate a war-scenario as the paradigm for a chaotic situation, and from it kinda follows that if everyone had a gun, and everyone reacted the same way to chaos, then the result would be an inverted war. war without the war part--a kind of stand-off.

chaos doesn't particularly bother me---i generally understand it as ordered in ways that are outside my usual perspective, so not as chaos. so i'm in general more curious about fluid situations, and partial structures etc, than i am put off by them.

but violence bothers me, because i dont understand it as an abstraction, but i also dont have a frame of reference for war, not experientially--so i think of violence as immediate...personal. i link violence to the most primitive and unthinking types of dominance--this follows from my experience--i find it repellent, stupid, a last resort available of all thinking fails.

so it follows i would see the idea of someone with a gun as someone who is using a crude instrument to avoid looking at a situation that lay outside expectations----and my frame of reference prompts me to see violence as particular--so maybe that explains why, when i imagined the mall thing, i without even thinking about it projected myself as distanced from it.

but because i see violence as primitive and a gun as a crude instrument, the combination seems to me an expression of a simplistic, unthinking attempt to impose a primitive order on a chaotic situation. so i see it as doomed, as failing, as impotent and ultimately as weak. but as i am writing this, i realize that i already slid from the mall scenario into more political situations--distancing myself from violence again.

so i imagine people with guns shooting and missing--i dont believe that anyone faced with an unexpected violent situation on the order of the mall shooting would remain calm. they aren't calm in a war situation---people miss alot, and folk who are killed as a consequence are folk who are in a war zone--however in a war, violence is itself not arbitrary----while a kid who opens up with a gun in a mall does so arbitrarily.
the distinction lay in how the situation is defined up front.
you might not expect exactly what happens to you in a war, but you know in a general sense that its possible because the situational definition tells you that.
shopping in a mall does not tell you that violence is something you should be thinking about.
it just doesn't.

so it seems to me that the percentage of people who would remain entirely cool and collected in a mall shooting situation is pretty fucking minimal---because i think that folk who are strapped are tempermentally the least likely to be able to handle arbitrariness--if they were cool with unexpected situations in general, they wouldnt be strapped in the first place. so i imagine innocent people getting shot up.

on the other hand, it seems that others have a different relationship to violence. i can see how it functions in what they write, but i dont understand it. i dont understand how anyone embraces violence. in this bizarre-o thread, you see alot of posturing on this. you even get treated to some folk ridiculing the imaginary scenarios of others, as if their ability to imagine themselves acting in a sociopathic manner in a violent situation means that they are more manly. i found, and find, that to be surreal.

the trick is that neither type of projection is more rational than the other.
both are shaped by disposition, preference, background.
how powerful these factors are in shaping your views still manages to surprise me.
that's more what i was thinking about.

i suppose its unnecessary to say that i find anything good or desirable in the idea of lots of people wandering around with guns.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dlish

Mr SD is the sound of reason. i find nothing in his response that any ordnary non military person wouldnt do.

to find yourself out of harms way but to then ensure u get yourself into it is nutty. sure, some people may do it, but the lay person would want to go home safely to their family and let the authorities do their job.

if u find yourself in the cross hairs its a different story. but to put ureself in it, especially if u have a family and kids to go home to at night is just crazy. sure, you'll make the news..dead or alive you'll make the news. but i'd rather not makethe news unless it was necesary. i guessitslike the 'would you cut ure arm off thread'.. u wouldnt do it unless its necesary

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Ustwo

rb I think I can help you understand and the way to do that is to stop analyzing a situation and live it as best you can without really getting into danger.

http://www.cpxsports.com/

Its close by, not overly expensive, great exercise, and may put you in touch with your long slumbering survival/hunter instincts.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

ktspktsp

You know, it's possible that having many armed people around could have taken that asshole down while he had killed less people. It's also possible that more people would have died of random shots.

But, having many people carrying weapons all the time, concerns me. Because there will be cases where people fight over random stuff, and it's possible that someone will use a gun then.

I don't have any data to back this up. But I feel the deathtoll caused from having many people armed all the time would be higher than the amount of lives saved in specific cases like this one.

yellowmac

I agree with your reasonable gut feeling. For example, just think of all the chaos and insanity that is caused by Black Friday and American consumerism. Now imagine that everyone is armed.

Overall, it's a very sad story that unfortunately, but not surprisingly, has rewarded infamy.

dksuddeth

outside of the corps, i've been around a shooting once. my reaction was to grab my wife and get her out of the firing line. I was unarmed and could do nothing else.

are you basing your opinion on any relevant experience or factual information? or is it simply how you feel?

roach, believe it or not, I was following your post quite well for once, until I got to this part....

Upon reading these two paragraphs, I could only see your projection of your inner feelings and emotions again.

I don't like violence. I don't like how it hurts people. I don't like how it makes me feel afterwards, especially if I've had to hurt others using it, but most of all, like you, I see it as the result of failed thinking.....most of the time.

8 people in an omaha mall probably agreed with you. So did 31 VT students. Millions of people all over this country agree with you. But as we've seen numerous times, there are others who view violence as either an enjoyable hobby or as a last escape from a world that they can't control anymore. It is these particular times when I'm reminded that we should ALL be thinking about the possibility of violence occurring, because it can...and does.

I see this as being entirely based upon your own perceptions and projections. I interact everyday with people who are carrying a gun and i've only had one person who didn't 'feel' right and left me disconcerted about this person having a gun. Otherwise, everyone else has always acted calm, rationally, and deliberately with all of the actions and reactions. This must be because of life experiences and the differences between ours.

I embrace it because it's real. violence exists and there is nothing you, nor I, can do about it. By ignoring it or pretending that it's not there is, to me at least, denying part of reality, living in denial, or just plain not being aware. That is surreal, ignoring reality.

This has been claimed every time a gun law is relaxed in a state. While there have been a couple of incidents to occur, there has been no blood in the streets.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

roachboy

dk--i was aware that once the post shifted into the mall scenario that it crept up into my particular world.
i ran with it because i got kinda interested in how the distancing from violence repeats itself inside the scenario i had in mind.
so i went with it, despite the fact that the language became polemical as i did so, because i decided to do a little recursive exercise with the post.

the bottom line statement in your last post is :

"violence is real"

and the problem with that statement is at least two-fold:

violence is no more or less real than non-violence.

your category "real" is strange, because at bottom it means "what i choose to privilege when i project an idea of the world for myself"

it's entirely inside the loop my last post was trying to talk about.
what you attribute the status "real" to is an aesthetic matter.
you dont see it because you use the category of "reality" in a one-dimensional way--you act as though it is not problematic, that it is given in the way you take you chair to be or your hand to be. reality is an object, then. i think that view is----to be charitable---naive.

but you invoke it, as a thing, and act as though it gets you out of a circuit of projections, when the fact of the matter is that your use of "real" is what protects your circuit of projections.

you also seem to have missed this:

which was the point of the entire post.



what we are involved with in this kind of thread, then, is the exchange of mutually exclusive imaginary constructs.
you see the real as something primitive, linked to instinct that you imagine by-pass all social controls.
i imagine human beings as capable of self-limitation in a meaningful way, enough so i can entertain the hope that we, collectively, can control these primitive instincts.

neither is more "real" than the other.

but riddle me this: you write on a computer, linked via a telecommunications infrastructure to a nebulous space of packet exchange called the net. if violence was all that was real, how would go explain that we are communicating in this format at all? are we making it up, what we are doing?

you engage in debates on a messageboard, and in those debates you try to persuade people of your positions using arguments. if violence is all that is real, why do you bother?

not only that, but you have a normative vision of how we should organize society that you see as possible and preferable to what exists. that means you HAVE TO have some faith in the deliberative capacities of human collectives to organize themselves--and to change that organization--which means that you cannot actually understand reality as a thing, you have to see it as something that human beings make and remake collectively, and that you HAVE TO attach some importance to deliberation as a process.

you argue for constitutional fundamentalism in many contexts--the core of the 18th century american experryment was collective deliberation at the local level. you seem to find something valuable in a vision of small-scale direct democratic types of self-organization--but if the "real" is some hobbesian space of endless civil war, then your belief in democracy is a delusion--because it does not can not and will no ever change anything fundamental. because we, as human beings, are slaves to our drives.

i dont know why you would find that a compelling view, particularly since it works against everything you write, here and elsewhere, about democracy, about the constitution, about the possibilities that you see for some libertarian alternate future--none of it means shit if you really think that we are condemned to simply repeat patterns imposed on us by our primitive drives.

if your conception of what is "real" is accurate, we would still be in caves. we would only be capable of that. anything else would be unreal, dreaming.
so we could not possibly be comunicating, now, in this medium.
and maybe we aren't.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

MSD

People who carry guns legally are less likely than average to be convicted of violent crimes, and working back from that I can conclude that they are less likely to commit them. Some say that "an armed society is a polite society," meaning that everyone is afraid to piss each other off. I've found that the contrary is true in personal experience, People I know who carry guns understand the extreme responsibility that comes with the capability to use deadly force and are more cautious when armed than not to avoid conflict, or its escalation when it is inevitable.

The media and popular culture have painted an unflattering portrait of gun owners, and although many seem to embrace the macho man/Wild West image, the majority are responsible people who simply want to be prepared for the worst.

I just want to remark that this is the first time in my life I've been referred to as the sound or voice of reason.

Fire

just a nagging question mr sd - I presume that with regard to a five year old being to id an ak vs. an sks you were speaking of the media- I own one of each, and at the time of my post none of the mall cam footage was released, and all the outlets were saying it was an SKS, so that was what I thought he had used......

__________________
Thought the harder, Heart the bolder,
Mood the more as our might lessens

dlish

sometimes i even surprise myself!

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

MSD

Of course I meant the media, I don't have a very high opinion of them.

Looks like it was an AK after all.

Attached Images

mall.jpg (82.5 KB, 61 views)

Fire

cool- sorry for my insecurity- as to the media, on another forum they were complaining about how the media did not know computers or guns- and that they noticed it cause they knew a lot about those things- then one poster asked if anyone had thought about how little the media knew about all the things they (at the forum) knew nothing about- kind of scary when it is often our major source of info......

__________________
Thought the harder, Heart the bolder,
Mood the more as our might lessens

biznatch

Hmmm. There's a difference here...no fear of death in paintballing.
I've played paintball with friends, and while it does hurt like a bitch, you're still more likely to actually aim carefully and shoot well than in a real life, real, letahl bullets situation.
Although the first time I played, someone came out of a door, with his gun over his head to admit defeat (he'd been shot). I was so nervous, I reacted quickly and shot him in the chest. That kind of thing could very well happen to someone with a legally-owned gun, in a high risk situation.

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Check it out: The Open Source/Freeware/Gratis Software Thread

n0nsensical

The whole concept of carrying a gun to theoretically protect yourself from a theoretical attack is laughable to me. I couldn't imagine preparing myself for an event of that likelihood every day. It's like stockpiling supplies for the Apocalypse, attempting to minimize personal risk to the point of obsession. I would be much more dangerous to myself with a gun than anyone else. I would also be more concerned about getting killed by the police if I WAS carrying a gun than by a random individual if I wasn't.

Besides, arming the populace will do nothing to prevent these kinds of attacks. Maybe end them faster, but not prevent them in the first place, which I think could be much more effective. When you WANT to die, the fact that other people might have guns is no deterrent, and none of these shooters have any delusions about the fact that they're going to die. They shoot first; somebody's going to die no matter how many other guns are around. They are all estranged from a society that they believe has wronged them. Some people just don't want to deal with life, and some further are determined to take others with them. Ask why that is, and maybe in the answers lies a better solution than more guns.

What kind of reality do YOU live in and who's fighting the war?

__________________
"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." --Abraham Lincoln

Fire

we have been looking for a "better solution" for thousands of years- ultimately, some people are broken and will fail in any society- until someone finds a mythical way to make everyone fit in and feel loved, I'll be getting my concealed carry permit- its more likely to give me an advantage over someone trying to end my life than believing in the goodness of the human spirit....

__________________
Thought the harder, Heart the bolder,
Mood the more as our might lessens

MSD

The study was done over 20 years ago, but in 1986, 60% of felons avoided committing crimes when they knew the potential victim was armed, 40% when they thought the potential victim might be armed, and that they avoided home invasions because they were afraid of being shot.

source: James Wright and Peter Rossi, “Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms”,

In a survey of convicted felons,
74% agree that"one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is
that they fear being shot during the crime."
57% agree that "criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim
than they are about running into the police."
source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Federal Firearms Offenders study, 1997


It is a deterrent.

Willravel

60% is a D-. The other 40%? They open fire. It' call that a dangerous deterrant.

Statistically speaking, how likely is one to be shot by a felon if they aren't armed and pose no threat? I'm sure I can guess, but I'm hoping someone has a line on stats so that we can compare and contrast. It'd be silly to only have statistics for one side of a debate, after all.

Baraka_Guru

Nice, if not dated, statistics. A deterrent, maybe, but a sloppy one considering how many women are shot by their partners and how many people die from self-inflicted gun-shot wounds.

But, really, what do home-invasions and muggings have to do with a guy losing his nut and shooting up a mall? Do you really think this guy would have changed his mind if he thought people were armed?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

opus123

The kid only fired 15 shots ! Not enough time for anyone with a gun to react. 16th shot was to his own damn self. Depression sucks, but a depressed teen is horrible to see and its sad when they take other people out before they shoot themselves.

Jonathan

__________________
"We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with
ourselves. It is a civil war, and in all such
contentions, triumphs are defeats." Mr Colton
==================================

MSD

I was responding to the idea that a gun is a liability rather than an asset. Random shooting sprees like this can only be prevented by remaining vigilant and helping the mentally ill get the treatment that they need before they can become a threat to themselves and others.

Self-inflicted gunshot deaths are unfortunate, but a suicidal person who is intent on killing himself will find a way to do so. The statistic that family members are more likely to be killed by a gun than criminals was based on a study of a nonrandom sample of 43 incidents in two cities. The statistic of women being murdered in the home was a case study of only 266 incidents, did not use a random sample, and did not distinguish between legal and illegal guns. It also concluded that 54% of homicides of women in the home are committed without firearms, and that drug use and prior domestic abuse (which, if reported and addressed properly, will disqualify an abusive spouse from legally owning guns.)
According to the British Home Office (this was before the 1997 handgun ban, I don't have a definite date on the numbers but 1993 is coming to mind for some reason,) the chance of being injured by an armed robber was as follows:

Victim resisted with a gun; 6%
Victim did nothing at all: 25%
Victim resisted with a knife: 40%
Victim used non-violent resistance: 45%

Willravel

Those numbers just shifted radically. When we ask the convicts, they say 40% will not be stopped by a gun. In the UK, it's closer to 6%?

The main reason I asked is because I'm pissed that it seems the whole internet is pro guns. I'd be okay if both sides were equally researched and evidence was presented, but they're not. I can't find the information on the flip side of your stats, MSD.

Ustwo

Obviously it must be the internets fault, not your strong assumptions.

__________________
Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Willravel

How often are people who are unarmed shot during a robbery?

Go ahead. Google it.

How many home invasions where the homeowner is not armed are the homeowners shot?

Go ahead. Google it.

Baraka_Guru

Accessibility is an issue:

Accessibility to firearms, particularly handguns, influences the rate of teen suicides. Handguns were used in nearly 70% of teen suicides in 1990, up 20% since 1970. A home with a handgun is almost ten times more likely to have a teen suicide than a home without. If you have a gun, please take every precaution when storing it.

(emphasis mine)

"...please take every precaution when storing it." (i.e. Make is as though it weren't there at all.) The sad truth is, this isn't being done nearly enough.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/thesilentepidemic...tors/guns.html
(I will dig up more recent statistics upon request.)

So, the fact remains, regardless, that 46% of homicides of women in the home are committed with firearms. Does this mean it is the leading method? It appears so.

In the USA, a gun in the home increases the risk that someone in the household will be murdered by 41%; but increases the risk for women by 272%;

It isn't an isolated problem:

In France and South Africa, one in three women killed by their husbands are shot; in the USA this rises to two in three;

Source: http://www.iansa.org/women/vaw/guns-women-en.pdf


* * * * *

Are you saying there is only one study? Are you suggesting that there isn't any other data? Who told you that, exactly?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

dksuddeth

wouldn't once be enough? within the last year, half a mile from my home, a store clerk was murdered during a robbery. He was unarmed. The mere thought that it could happen should be enough to make anyone carry. Those who 'play the odds' confuse the hell out of me. How can you 'play the odds' when your families welfare is at stake?

when THIS can happen, who cares how many? Would it matter to you if YOUR family were that one in whatever?

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Willravel

1 in 6 billion? No, that would not be enough. You'd have to be certifiably insane to prepare for something that has 6,000,000,000 to 1 odds to occur. Frankly, one would be certifiably insane to prepare for something that's 1,000,000/1 odds.
Well 4 miles from my house the other day, a store owner was not killed after working 30 years at the store. I can name hundreds of people I know who weren't killed last year, myself included (surprise!).

Plan9

*knocks on door, lets himself in, is wielding big tube of KY jelly and a pair of handcuffs*

Hey... uh, I'm here for the gang bang.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."