Sandy Hook Elementary School Victims Relief Fund

A bit tardy here, starting to catch up on multiple replies.

I forgot to include another large item, our 'War On (Some) Drugs'. Our appetite for illicit recreational pharmaceuticals is quite large, and its underground supply chain is violent. For the imported products, that violence is even worse on the other side of the border.

There is much to suggest that replacing our current approach with a reasonably broad legalization would go a long ways towards reducing this drug-associated violence, and its many costs. A quality-controlled legal market could also shut down the black market fentanyl production that is now killing far more people by overdose than violence ever did.

Some people seem to separate gun and non-gun violence into non-intersecting universes. Others don't, seeing too much substitution and fungibility and linkage to be separated.

We have a lot of non-gun violence too. When I originally found figures for our world region, our total national murder rate, with and without guns, was less than the non-gun murder rate of immediate and regional neighbors and major trading partners (licit and illicit) at lower latitudes. (I haven't yet pulled more recent stats.)

I won't and can't defend everything brought up by the poster you are responding to here, but can respond to a few items.

Making sure baddies don't have guns, is not a sufficient answer for many self defense viewpoints. We still have more than enough non-gun violence to drive serious demands for self defense.

Even if (1) we abolished all guns in civilian hands (including those that were never on the legal civilian market, e.g. smuggled, 'leaked' from various government entities, or illegally built), (2) there were no substitution of means (i.e. for lack of a gun, would-be gun-wielding criminals give up and abandon all violence), and (3) no crimes previously deterred by the potential victims being armed, now become un-deterred ...

... the remaining non-gun crime rates would still drive high demands for self defense. It isn't as if guns are the sole fear, or even primary fear for many.

And I believe you'll find considerable disbelief here that even any one of those (1)(2)(3) items are achievable or realistic. It shouldn't be difficult to show that substitution of means is less common for interpersonal violence than we commonly see for self harm. But zero, or even low? That won't be believed here.

Note also that violence against women (especially middle class suburban white women, see Gabby Pettito vs 700 missing Indigenous people) drives considerably more fear here than does violence against men, irrespective of their actual frequencies. And when violence against women does occur, it is much less likely to include guns than does violence against men. The criminal classes seem to feel more able or willing to attack women without using a gun, than they are for men.

Are you talking vanishingly small in your country, or ours? Of course it is small in your country, because few of the good guys have guns, and the practice is very strongly discouraged. Here, be very careful what figures you use. The FBI UCR counts have been shown to be serious undercounts, in part because of how the figures are reported to that agency. (Similarly, the counts for police are also serious undercounts.) I've seen a number of debates where activists get caught by an inversion between their 'small' numbers for some things and their 'large' numbers for others.

 

Most Americans "know" we are different than the others. But agreement start falling apart when one asks various groups, domestic and foreign, just how we are different. For the domestics, hype up a lot of imagination while ignoring or denying the warts. For the foreign, well, they still hype up a lot of (other) imagination, though do tend to get more warts right.

If you get a chance, look up reasearch into historic homicide rates. Not just the modern statistics of our lifespan, but serious estimates going back many centuries, some areas even most of a millennium. Western Europe dropped to quite low rates a couple centuries ago. Various portions of the rest-of-world, the entire Americas included, have also declined but still trail.

 

(A week late, but ...)

Another day, another massacre. 25 dead in Osaka.

Had it been committed with a gun, it would have been the lead headline on many American newscasts and webpages, as was the Christchurch massacre. But as we saw with the Kyoto massacre, non-gun victims are much 'less equal' than gun victims. For Osaka, the two traditional national networks I watched didn't even mention it. Nor did I ever see it on CNN's main web page (I don't have cable TV to see their video stream). I saw it only on other websites, pushed much farther down the page than any gun massacres, and with only a tiny fraction of the followup.

This Osaka tragedy is another example of what James Alan Fox (*) called out several years ago, except that the disparity this time is much more stark:

Kyoto Animation arson killings didn't get much attention because we couldn't demonize guns
The Kyoto Animation killing left 34 dead, but it didn't have much impact because we don't pay attention to mass killings without guns. We should.

"Mass shootings remain one of the most widely discussed topics here in the United States. By comparison, we just don’t seem to be as unnerved by mass killings carried out by other methods, unless of course they hint of terrorism, be it of foreign or domestic origin. ...

Of the 391 U.S. massacres of four or more victims since 2006 contained in the AP/USAT/NU database, 85 (or 22%) involved weapons other than a gun. Of course, none led to calls for banning gasoline and other accelerants or proposals to limit the size of knives. It is the politics and controversy surrounding gun control that highlight mass shootings above the rest.

Lack of attention is lack of respect

Whatever the reason, the lesser attention given to mass killings that do not invoke guns is disrespectful to the victims whose lives are tragically cut short. Is the crime any less serious if there were no gunshots? Are the victims any less dead? In fact, victims of burns, suffocation or stabbing often suffer a much slower and painful death than gunshot victims.

It is surely fruitless to assess the relative severity of mass killings on the basis of weaponry. Our sense of outrage and concern for the victims should be the same whether they died from a firearm or fire. "

(*) Anyone who has been carefully following American violence issues for any length of time should at least recognize James Alan Fox's name as a long time researcher on this topic. Not a friend of the pro-gun community, but also not afraid to call out excesses and errors and biases of the anti-gun community. He is associated with the only mass violence database that is means-agnostic: The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database.


It seems almost as if the issue isn't about killings at all. It is only about guns, nothing else.

 

yup

if they had used "fully semi automatic assault ryyyyfillles with huge banana magazines and scary black paint jobs"

it would really really make the news.

but.... when a fully semi automatic hand gun is used, crickets.

if a knife is used, or a bat ,,,, crickets


if a car is used, man that's crazy we need higher mpg cars that can't run into crowds and won't melt da eyes caps !

it's all about the narrative

 

I live about a half mile away from the hospital, but I still know first-aid at a fairly high level.
It's very aptly named.
I keep several first-aid kits in the house.

I live less than three miles from the nearest police station and at least three LEOs live in my neighborhood.
I use the same modality for personal protection in my home.

 

That is perfectly OK. Other people might get angry if someone doesn't respond immediately, but I understand that you have a life and priorities and stuff.

Yes, this is certainly true. Portugal shows an interesting alternative approach, where legalisation led not only to less violence, but also to better outcomes for addicts, with many more finding their way out of addiction.

It is definitely a major factor in violence across the Americas.

You do, but.... As I've said before (and I know this is only one aspect of violence crime), your non-gun murder rate is about the same as non-gun murder rates in the UK, Australia and much of Europe.

It's also worth bearing in mind that your regional trading partners don't exist in a vacuum. Drugs go North and guns go South. US gun laws are a major factor in the level of gun violence in many of those countries.

hehe

It's a sufficient answer elsewhere.

Yes. And I think we see in the other poster that fear and hate are more important than logic and stats in such decisions.

Again, if I were to go for logic - while acknowledging the societal and economic differences you've mentioned - I'd show that guns account for pretty much precisely all of the disparity in murder rates, and that it's not about substitution: killing people with a gun is a lot easier than using most available substitutes.

This is true. But it's the same argument as "people will get run over by cars so there's no point restricting guns", or "the police won't catch all criminals, so we might as well have no police". You seem to be saying that restricting guns will reduce violence against men by more than it reduces violence against women, so there's no point restricting guns.

Yours. See the links above.

Also the bad guys don't have guns.

Hmmm..... And yet no matter what figures I see, they all tell essentially the same story, with greater or lesser degrees of exaggeration. The "good guy with a gun" thing is a myth. Like I said to the other poster, we are not all John McClane.

I get that the fantasy is comforting and fun. But it is a fantasy. I think you're aware of this: the "good guy with a gun" has never been at the core of your arguments.

 

Kyoto.

I see your argument, but I think you're wrong, and I think the USA Today article is nonsense. And that's me being polite about the USA Today article.

For one thing, the Kyoto killings got a lot more coverage in Australia than any US mass shooting would these days. I'd say it got about the same coverage here as the Las Vegas shootings, which killed about twice as many people. Both Kyoto and Vegas are foreign for us, but what happened in Kyoto was unusual and surprising; what happened in Vegas was neither. But Vegas had the advantage of being in an English-speaking country and of there being some good video footage.

And of course Kyoto didn't get as much coverage in the US as shootings in the US would. It happened abroad.

There is a clear hierarchy when it comes to mass killings and disasters. The presence or lack of guns has nothing to do with it. For simplicity here, I'll explain the hierarchy for English-speaking countries:

1. Killings within my country.
2. Killings in rich English-speaking countries.
3. Killings in rich non-English-speaking countries near me.
4. Killings in rich non-English-speaking countries elsewhere.
5. Killings in poor English-speaking countries.
6. Killings in poor non-English speaking countries.

Other factors blur those lines too, of course, such as whether the event is unusual; whether it happened in a country with high levels of migration between it and my country; whether there's good video footage; whether children were involved; whether there's a juicy scandal involved; whether famous people were involved; and so on.

As you'll see, for you as an American, most school shootings and mass workplace shootings happen in area 1. Kyoto Animation happened in Area 4. This is the only reason it didn't get as much coverage in the US as an American shooting might have done.

Think back to May. I'd be willing to bet there was very little coverage in the US of the Kazan school shooting in Tatarstan. It was mentioned on Australian and British news, and then they moved on. Because it was foreign and no-one really cared.

This is why James Alan Fox's USA Today article isn't just wrong; it's dishonest. I don't know what his motivations are here: I haven't looked into him.

But I find it hard to believe that anyone involved in regularly writing for American media could have made this claim in good faith.

At best, it's a profoundly stupid article, but it seems more likely that it is not stupid, but calculatingly dishonest. I'm not blaming you for that, or placing any accusation of dishonest use of the article: I'm blaming the author and USA Today's editors.

 

I thought you might find it a bit too complicated. I will try to simplify it for you.

I might be able to defend us. Or I might not.

"How would you defend your family in these situations?" is a stupid question. There are far too many variables. Maybe I'd try to reason with him. Maybe I'd spray a Diet Coke in his face. Maybe I'd risk getting shot/hit/etc to disarm him. Maybe I would use my mad karate skillz. I don't know. How many people are there? What are they armed with? What do they want? Who is in my house? Which of my houses is it? What language do they speak? Am I near a fire extinguisher? Have they already taken someone hostage? (And do I like the hostage?) There is so much going on.

What's important is that I may be able to adapt to the situation. You will not. You will think "I have gun. Use gun."

Questions like, "Where is my gun?" "Can I access it?" "Is it loaded?" "Have they already got my gun?" "Do the attackers have guns?" "Is using a gun the best thing to do here?" have not occurred to you. You cannot and will not adapt to the situation. You have a single strategy that, if blocked, leaves you utterly helpless.

Even putting aside the increased risk to yourself and your family posed in everyday situations by having a gun in your house, you are, at best, no more likely than me to be able to defend yourself and your family.

I don't know, privilege. Why is it so hard for you?

 

That screenshot shows me nothing of the sort. It shows me that there is crime. It does not suggest in any way why your ownership of a gun, my failure to own a gun, or our respective strategies to defend our families, would be in any way relevant.

See multiple posts above.

The facts of the matter are that, in the event of some sort of home invasion, you do not make yourself or your family safer by having a gun. And in everyday life, your possession of a gun puts you and your family at greater risk.

I choose to keep my family safe. You choose to put yours in danger.

It's your choice, but don't spout bollocks about how it makes you safer. "I choose to have something that puts my family in danger because it makes me feel like a real man" is a perfectly valid argument. "I choose to keep my family safe by putting them in danger" is not.

https://www.safewise.com/resources/guns-at-home/
Statistically, having a gun in your home is more dangerous for you and your family, especially if you have young children or teens. A 2014 review in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded having a firearm in the home, even when it’s properly stored, doubles your risk of becoming a victim of homicide and triples the risk of suicide.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do-guns-make-us-safer-science-suggests-no/

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/scientists-agree-guns-dont-make-society-safer/

Will a Gun Keep Your Family Safe? Here’s What the Evidence Says
In 2015, David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and Sara Solnick, an economist at the University of Vermont, analyzed national government surveys involving more than 14,000 people and reported that guns are used for self-protection in less than 1 percent of all crimes that take place in the presence of a victim. They also found that people were more likely to be injured after threatening attackers with guns than they were if they had called the police or run away.


https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-stop-more-crimes-evidence-shows/


I get that these articles will be too long for you to read. So I will summarise here:

- Guns are almost never used in self-defence.
- When guns are used in self-defence, they increase the likelihood of the person defending themselves being injured or killed.
- When your house isn't being invaded by crazed drug-addicted psychopaths (much of the time, in my experience), your ownership of a gun massively increases the risk of you or your family being harmed.

This is how I protect my family.

You put your family at risk every day. I do not.

I defend my family. You endanger them.

I love my family and want to keep them safe.

Your previous posts would strongly suggest otherwise.

We're not talking about mass shootings at this stage. They're just a bonus on top of the everyday killings. You switched the conversation to whether you'd be able to defend yourself and your family.

I am having a really interesting conversation with another poster here. He is making points with which I disagree, and vice versa, and we are making coherent arguments to each other. We are finding that we agree on many issues when we think deeply about them. I am certainly learning from him, and I hope he is learning from me. It is great.

That is not the case with you.

So if you want to chuckle, think you've "won" (in the same way that you think you're "defending your family") and walk away, I for one would welcome that.

 

That study is complete bovine waste product....but hey.
Pick cherries to your heart's content.

Preach on Brother!
Since you seem to be in a different economic depth band than I operate in, perhaps you can pick out one or two anti-gun groups in the US and enrich them with a cash contribution!

Dig Deep!
As you can see from the data trends below, they're doing good work for the Lord!
The more they ban guns, the more my rights expand.

I personally have used a firearm to prevent an armed person from completing a car-jacking, and while I maintain the firm belief that no property crime is worth a human life, a visible .45ACP > a 5" knife.
Even though at that time (mid 1980's) a license to carry a handgun was not much easier to get in Southern Indiana than it was in jolly old England - I DID HAVE ONE, but the encounter took place in a foreign land (Commonwealth of Kentucky) so my story obviously never made it to the cherry-pickers in Cambridge (our Cambridge, not YOURs.)
The United States has some 52 states (de facto) and at that time concealed carry laws were this crazy stew-pot of outdated reciprocity agreements and non-standard standards.

Then?
Two very strange and wonderful things began to happen:

Well meaning (THEY say) idiots tried to ban an ugly, overly expensive, malfunction-prone semi-automatic rifle in 1992.

Meanwhile, the Austrian military had adopted this equally ugly but fantastically cheap and reliable pistol made by somebody named Gaston Glock.

Result: • U.S.: violent crime rate graph 1990-2018 | Statista

It's not just gun rights.
Since the 1980s firearms technology has....er....."exploded" in the area of personal defense.
It's now very easy (and cheap!) to buy a very small 9mm pistol with a 10(+) round capacity, and bullet technology makes this not only an acceptable choice over my old .45AARP, but s SUPERIOR one.

That ugly, old, inefficient, and unreliable scary black rifle has also undergone a technological make-over since it became our nation's most popular rifle.
They're cheap.
Widely available.
MORE effective (especially when re-chambered in 300AAC!)

Since the 80's I've probably prevented more than the onw violent and one semi-violent crime that caused me to "produced a firearm."
Most recently....just by bending down and tying my shoes when I noticed two underemployed gentlemen sizing me up while I was pumping gas at 0200.
I don't think it was "plumber's butt" that caused them to quickly alter their course and retire to their car.....
(I work after hours frequently.)

My Family are all firearms proficient, which means that they we are taught and assiduously practice firearms safety FIRST.

This is how I protect my family.

You?
Do you!!

Keep trying to take guns, by all means!!
I think you should also work on suppressors, since they're really scary and used in nearly all crimes.
Oh, and don't forget "ghost guns" which are very aptly named!
Those need to be banned immediately!

I do not think anyone in this forum has even met your family.

 

Osaka, 17 December 2021. Or did your news completely skip that? If so, Q.E.D.

 

Sorry - my mistake. It was because you'd linked to the story about the Kyoto one.

Yes, we got the Osaka one on the news here too - I've just checked. I didn't see much of it as I was driving from Orange to Broken Hill that day (885km, with no cell coverage or radio signal for about 600km of that), and then I had to complete a report for a client when I got to BH. So it wasn't a big day for reading, watching or listening to the news for me.

The next day I was out all day: there's a private road about 40km outside of BH where I was teaching my ten-year-old to drive. It was fun, but again, it meant I wasn't reading or watching the news. We were listening to a pop-music station which has a two-minute news bulletin on the hour.

So while I caught it briefly on the news, I didn't hear much about it. Looking through Australian coverage now, though, there seems to be about as much as I'd expect - the first non-Covid story on the TV news on the day, and the first foreign story on the news the day after. Again, slightly more than we'd get for a US school shooting, because it was so shocking, but less than we'd get for any sort of mass-murder in Australia or Britain, because of its position in the hierarchy that I mentioned in my earlier post.

We did have a great road trip, though. We're back now, but I have to head back to BH on New Year's Day, so if there are any massacres on Jan 1 or 2, I'll probably miss them as well. Still, US schools will be closed, so that does reduce the risk.

 

...with no cell coverage or radio signal for about 600km

I had a radio like that once.

 

Yes, it's like the old joke about the Texan in Glasgow.

-----

It is astonishing just how empty Australia is (in terms of people) once you get away from the coast. On the 750km from Dubbo to Broken Hill, I go through five towns - two with populations of a bit under 4,000, two with populations of a bit under 2,000, and one with a population of just under 1,000. And along most of that route there are no other towns with a population of over 500 within about 300km either side of that road. It's really very empty indeed.

Lots of cool animals, though. When I'm driving I'll see lots of kangaroos (some alive, most not), as well as emus, echidnas, goannas and wallabies. And goats. Lots of goats. The echidnas are my favourites.

 

the condescending bits won't get a response.

1) maybe the question IS stupid. maybe so..I hope it's not, I hope it's something everyone can ask themselves, and have logical answers.

2) lots of people own their own home, some of us own more than one.its really not a big deal, just pick one and go with it.

3) I'm confused, how does having MORE options for defense become a bad thing ?

4) I get the idea that you may be less familiar with firearms than some of the other people here.... ie: where they are stored, how they are loaded, and how quickly accessible they may be.... I bet you would be much more comfortable about those subjects, with a little training.

5) hmmm, well, if you wake up with a terrible headache, tied up, it's very likely that the defenses failed, up to and including cool ninja skills, guns, etc.... but over here in my world, I'm hoping that having easy access will prevent that becoming a reality.

6) it's usually better than a fire extinguisher it a bottle of coke, mad ninja skills etc

7) hmm... while borderline condescending, it's totally possible . good thing I'm not totally useless, have size, strength and speed on my side also. I prefer to never have to use either, but very happy to use the long range version of defense, instead of a coke bottle.

8) please, tell me more. my family (all of them) are decent shots, trained in safe uses, handling, of firearms and heavy machines.... but yes, there's always a possibility of a mistake happening. a personal preference to train and understand has overridden hoping for a coke bottle or negotiating with attackers.

if you'll read etcs scenario, you'll see a fairly real thing can happen, fairly quickly.... both the sizing up and decision to NOT mess with people, from just one glance. personally I've seen the glance from Leo's (thanks guys!), friends, veterans and criminals... with only the latter group being put off by what they say and realized. I'm ok with that. it gives me comfort to know it's worked without NEEDING to work, several times.

 

14 year old defended his family at his families business, shot the bad guy.

how in this scenario, would you prevent the criminals from robbing beating, and raping the defenseless people ?

I'm guessing spraying the robbers with coke from the fountain wouldn't stop the criminals.

if you watch the entire clip, it will say there were possibly a total of 4 criminals that robbed another store in similar fashion, on the same night.

I'm guessing the coke bottle fizz didn't work to prevent robbery in the earlier event.

 

If you think there were condescending bits, you might have to ask yourself why you inferred condescension.

It is stupid. As I said - and as you appear not to have understood - there are so many variables that there cannot be an answer.

No. This is part of what you appear not to have understood.

I cannot have a single strategy for each house. Again, the question of which house it is adds to the variables.

• One has two floors; the others have one (each!).
  
• One is close to the centre of a big city with easy access to one of the world's best hospitals; the other two are in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, with limited access to emergency healthcare.
  
• One is made of fibreboard. If we're talking about guns, it would be possible to shoot through the walls, even from the outside. The other two are made of sandstone, which is a lot harder to shoot through.
  
• Two have extensive stained glass; the other doesn't. This affects visibility.
• Each house has a very different garden, and different visibility to neighbours' houses.
  
• One has bindis in the garden, making running away barefoot much more difficult. The other two don't.
  
• Access to my car is different from each house.

Each of these factors - and many, many more - impacts which strategies would work and which would not. And yet you expect me, like you, to have a single strategy for how to "defend my family". This is absurd.

Oh, I know!

You don't. You have limited yourself to one option.

When I talked about the "mad karate skillz", I may have been being sarcastic, but it is relevant.

Back in my (really actually very good at) karate days, one thing we were taught is that an assailant with a weapon is generally more easily dealt with than an assailant without a weapon.

Take a knife, for example. The assailant's entire mindset is "I have an advantage because I have a knife". His only strategies for threat, attack and defence are to use his knife. He's not going to use the hand that isn't holding the knife, or his head, or his feet, or take advantages in changes in the victim's balance, or much else. He's just thinking about the knife, and that is what he's going to use. So take the knife from him or prevent him from being able to use it, and he's helpless. The same applies to a baseball bat, or a cricket bat, or a crowbar, or a gun.

You're the same. You've made it very clear in all your posts that the only strategy you're thinking of is your gun. There's no other thought in there - certainly none that you've articulated. Once that option is removed - because the baddie gets to your gun first, or you can't get to your gun, or you've run out of bullets, or whatever - you're going to be helpless, because you don't have the flexibility that is offered by not being tied to a single (most likely ineffective) option.

If you can access it quickly, so can someone else.

If it's secure and others can't access it, there's every chance you're not going to get to it quickly enough.

You're describing a situation where I've been taken by surprise, or assaulted in my sleep, and tied up.

How would my having easy access to a gun make any difference here? I am tied up and emerging from unconsciousness.

Oh, I remember how it makes a difference! It means my gun is conveniently available for my attacker!

No, it usually isn't. See the table in my previous post.

Why this fixation on one sarcastic comment? Weird.

But in terms of being "not totally useless, have size, strength and speed on my side also" [sic], see my response to your point 3.

That fixation again.... Weird.

Ah, yes. The old "Yes, the statistics all show that this is a terrible idea and is more likely to get me and my family killed or injured, but we're different because we know what we're doing" idea.

Here's one that's much the same. Statistics show that drink driving is really very dangerous. But Dave knows he's a good driver. Dave has been on an advanced driving course. Dave knows what he's doing. And Dave can handle his drink. So he's OK to drive after a couple of six-packs, because he's had training and knows what he's doing. He's not like those idiots that get drunk and drive when they don't know what they're doing, and die, or kill other people. Those are statistics, and he's not like those people. He knows better.

YOUR GUNS ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE USED TO KILL YOU OR MEMBERS OF YOUR FAMILY THAN TO DEFEND YOU OR YOUR FAMILY. ALL THE STATS SHOW THIS. IT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE DIFFERENT. ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE THOUGHT THEY KNEW BETTER TOO.

AS STATED IN AN EARLIER POST, BY HAVING A GUN AT HOME - EVEN IF IT IS PROPERLY SECURED AND STORED - YOU HAVE AT LEAST DOUBLED THE LIKELIHOOD OF YOU OR ANYONE ELSE IN YOUR HOUSEHOLD BEING MURDERED. THAT IS NOT "KEEPING YOUR FAMILY SAFE" BY ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.

I understand why you want a gun. I know why you want a gun. And that's fine. Many of us have similar feelings, and we don't like to talk about them. And I know a gun can compensate for that.

But don't pretend it makes you safer. It does not. It puts you and your family in more danger than they would be in otherwise.

Sorry - it was too incoherent.

It is good to know you have comfort. That's what gun ownership is about. The feeling of security. Not security.

 

For every story like this, I can show you 1000 people who were killed with their own (or their family's) guns.

But if the fantasy makes you feel good, who am I to stop you?

If you'd watched the entire clip - I'm guessing you didn't, unless you're wilfully misinterpreting it - you'd understand the following:

The robbers were after cash. They made a grab for the cash drawer.

In such a situation, I don't know how I'd prevent those robbers from beating and raping the defenceless people. Because they were robbers and clearly had no intention of beating or raping anyone.

If you watch the entire clip, it will say there were possibly a total of 4 criminals that robbed another store in similar fashion, on the same night, without beating or raping anyone.

So how would I prevent them from beating and raping people? I wouldn't. I wouldn't need to.

So what we have here is a boy who shot someone to defend - what? The insurance company's money? Great!

And he was f---ing lucky that he hit the guy. If he hadn't, he would at best have escalated the situation. Then there may have been violence, when there wouldn't have been otherwise. After he "struggles with the gun's holster" (that bit comes verbatim from the clip that you seem not to have watched), it's very clear that it was pure luck that he hit the robber - and not his mother, or the counter, or a window, or a customer.

Still, again, the fantasy makes you feel good and that is what is important.

That fixation again... Weird.

And again! Weird.

You know I said you seemed to have the problem of not being able to think beyond a single strategy? Yeah, that.

 

Possibly I can add value to this discussion. American citizen never having owned a gun, now living in China. I send advanced students to US for further study and warn all of them that they cannot just walk around city streets at night, because (among other things) guns. People from 'few gun' countries are naive to that. Having personally invested in those brains, I am thus obliged.

I am not the data keeper for how US' unique gun policy improves survivor ship of innocents. Possibly I will move back to US; for that I would add to cost of that move the purchase of ballistic vests to be worn during public exposure. Weird, right? But US has, with all its greatness become weird in this way; important here

==
Almost every day in China I see bank money transfer trucks guarded by guys with shotguns. I cannot say for sure that they have rounds in chamber. Less frequently I see armed police with AR-15-like rifles who are who are enforcing some 'important-here' blah blah blah. I do not suppose that I could cause any of them to shoot holes in me. I just smile and wave (an unarmed) hand at them. China, thus, is full of guns.

==
I suppose that many countries are full of guns, but that fewer countries allow/enjoy/profit from guns in all hands. USA has led by way of a peculiar reading of 2nd Amendment. We are one war short of knowing whether that is an overwhelming benefit.

 

My kids were asking us about US gun ownership the other day, and brought up this exact issue. My elder daughter asked, "Why do they talk about 'freedom' and then create a situation where they can't walk around the city at night? Why do they talk about 'freedom' but have their bags searched going into school?"

My wife gave her what I thought was a good explanation. She said, "When we, in Australia or in other countries, talk about 'freedom', we're talking about the freedom from things: freedom from oppression, freedom from violence, freedom from intimidation, and so on. When a lot of Americans talk about 'freedom', they're often talking about freedom to do things: owning a gun being the most important of those, but there are other things too."

I think this is a good point. We seek the freedom to live safely, and we know this comes with the caveat that we can't do things that would damage society. Others seek the freedom to do what they want, regardless of the impact this may have on everyone else in society.

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For some of our time in HK and Mainland China, I was working and my wife wasn't. One of the great "freedoms" came at times when we were in the pub with friends and I thought I'd better get an early night for work tomorrow, but she didn't have work and wanted to stay out. If I woke at 3am and she wasn't in bed, I knew it didn't mean there was a problem, just that she and a couple of the other non-working partners had found a pub that was open late and decided to keep going. I never worried that she might be lying in the street having been attacked. That freedom from worry is a good thing.

I'd say this was true, but others would not. Because I'd compare the US to what I always thought of - wrongly, as my fuzzy friend tells me - as comparable countries: rich democracies with rule of law.

But the US is not necessarily weird - and certainly isn't unique - when it comes to widespread gun ownership. There's widespread gun ownership, and gun use, and gun murder, in countries which fuzzy1 thinks are more comparable to the US.

Obviously many of those would be the type of country that Donald Trump described in disparaging terms that one time. Also the type of country that the US State Department often has Travel Advisories for because of the high risk of getting shot. But there you go.

So, weird to me, yes. Weird to someone living in China, yes. Weird to anyone in most of Western Europe and East Asia (except the Philippines), yes. But weird by global standards? Maybe not that weird.

I've had a few run-ins with heavily-armed people in China.

One was the Tian Mingjian Incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_Mingjian_incident. I was very close, and spent my time lying in the back of a taxi for shelter. I am sure @privilege would have been able to save everyone while wearing an undershirt and shouting "Yippee Ki Yay mother....etc" and would have been kissed by a beautiful woman afterwards when he had saved the day. Personally I found it quite scary and unpleasant.

One was with a People's Armed Police SWAT Team, outside Carrefour on Maliandao Lu in Beijing. Knife attack in Beijing store leaves 1 dead, 3 hurt, including toddler - Global Times. I was about to go in to buy some yoghurt and some Diet Coke (not as a weapon, @privilege - I just needed the caffeine) when I ran into the SWAT team, who suggested that now might not be a good time to go in, no matter how much I wanted the Diet Coke.

It's worth noting that this event backs up @fuzzy1 's position that alternative weapons can be used by mad people, and that adequate mental health care is an important factor in preventing such attacks. It's also worth noting that the guy was only able to injure people within arm's length, and only managed to kill one person, rather than the dozens he'd have been able to kill had he had a gun (see Tian Mingjian above, or any number of Americans).

And the other was with a People's Armed Police SWAT team who happened to be passing when I was searching for my cat after he'd fallen out of the window, and who crawled through hedges searching for him, using the flashlights attached to their guns. They were really nice.