Wow, and you only had to go back six months (story date: 10/31/08) to find an anecdotal example that weakly makes the counterpoint. How many mass shootings have we had in that timespan?
But hey, you're right, a shooting rampage per week is a small price to pay for some woman getting to shoot, rather than taser, her rapist once every six months. Arming everyone to the teeth is really the only sensible solution – and best of all, one with no downside.
Too bad the woman in that story wasn't in Binghamton the other day, she could have pretended like she was going to stop the guy who murdered 14 people while wildly shooting in his general direction.
Aside from all that, though, excellent point.
Schultzenhaben says:
I read the "Yahoo!" version of this news story first (which, is undoubtedly less reliable than CNN) and this whole thing makes me never want to return to the US. The Yahoo! story says:
"Poplawski had feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend."
Wow. I used to live in Pittsburgh. Screw that; I'm staying in Australia where there are less heavily-armed idiots. Really. Why the hell would I want to come back when I read all kinds of shit like this?
On a side note, I dislike the title of this post. It seems that he didn't really want to defend his (mother's) home, he just wanted to shoot himself some coppers but was too lazy to go out and find any. What a 'tard.
Sorry, I don't actually mean to insult mentally handicapped people in that way.
Looking through the comments of that St. Louis Today article posted by Ladiesbane, I found this gem:
ti712 December 19, 2008 11:55AM CST
She did a great job. Thinking more ladies should pick up their pistols and start shooting some of these folks.
I think the title of the story should be changed to "Woman Kills Negro;" it probably would attract SO much more positive attention. /snark.
ladiesbane says:
Ed, it was past my bedtime, and I pulled something out of my hat. But you're the logic guy, so please remind me: what's the fallacy that says recent anecdotes aren't superior to older anecdotes? (Ooh, it happened in October, so it doesn't count.) And what's the fallacy that says one example doesn't make or break the rule? It applies to us both, I know. And I know you have lots of other examples. So do I. A battle of the anecdotes is empty, but letting yours go without something to balance it out was not happening.
I don't expect you to track my own personal replies, but I chose this one because of my point during the guns-on-campus thread: we may be equals under the law, but I'm a girl and I'm five feet tall — just about any 98 pound weakling can dominate me. Some people view me as prey specifically because I'm too small to fight back successfully. And even if I were a black belt who mastered every weapon style, I'm still proper fucked if there's more than one guy involved. Some idiots think "I don't want to take self-defense courses because I shouldn't have to." These girls are easy victims. That mentality is also squeamish about guns because baaaad men use them. Good people use them too.
You seem to think guns are never (or too rarely) used safely and for a good/practical purpose — even a necessary one. They are. Other people have explained it very well. If you still don't agree, that's fine, but please explain to me how I'm supposed to make a guy back up (avoiding conflict by prevention) or stop him if he proceeds — using something other than a gun to do so. I know my personal experience, and the experiences of people I know, can't be meaningful to you. But do you expect me to discount it because my past doesn't fit with your headlines, and the conclusions you draw from them? And if you were me, what would you think?
The anecdote isn't less meaningful because it's old. The point is that you had to go back six months to find one that fit your argument, whereas I get a new mass shooting every 7-10 days to prove my point. You're cherry-picking. Find the one story that comes along every once in a while ("Old lady defends home with gun!" "Concealed carry prevents mugging!") and ignore the couple hundred gun murders every month that are in no way heroic, justified, or useful to your argument.
Your comments seem to prove what has always been my contention about concealed carry and gun ownership for defending one's home: the only purpose it seems to serve is to provide a psychological benefit to the owner/carrier. Your peace of mind is not worth a mass shooting per week. Sorry. Get a Taser. They can stop a rhinoceros from 15 feet, certainly enough to make your male aggressor Back Away. The fact that you prefer to carry a gun for this peace of mind is just that – a preference. Your preference. Which is fine, but the purpose of government is to serve the interest of the whole, not to cater to individual preferences. Hence myriad laws restricting firearms ownership.
Concealed carry isn't making you safer, you just think it is. And it certainly isn't making society a less dangerous place. That trade-off is not worth it to me. It just isn't. Five decades of increasingly shrill 'Protect the 2nd Amendment, the most important of all Amendments!' rhetoric have done nothing except put a lot of guns in the hands of violent people, and now the same people who made said argument seem to think that the appropriate solution is to put guns in the hands of every decent, law-abiding person to "even the score" or whatever. My point is not that guns are never used for a practical, useful purpose; it's that the times at which they AREN'T far outweigh the utility of the times at which they are.
Matthew says:
"…please explain to me how I’m supposed to make a guy back up (avoiding conflict by prevention) or stop him if he proceeds — using something other than a gun to do so."
-ladiesbane, April 5th, 2009 at 10:18 am
"But hey, you’re right, a shooting rampage per week is a small price to pay for some woman getting to shoot, rather than taser, her rapist once every six months."
-Ed, April 5th, 2009 at 2:00 am
That's AMAZING! Ed actually went back in time eight hours and answered that question! Or maybe somebody just didn't read the response in the first place.
But no, I'm going to go with the answer that includes tachyon fields and flux capacitors. It's much cooler.
Nick says:
Ed: You keep saying that defensive gun uses don't happen "enough" but provide no evidence to that effect. On the contrary, studies done by organizations such as Gallup, the LA Times, and CNN have found between 750,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses every year. This includes a study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which fell right in the middle of the group with an estimate of 1.5 million uses per year. Considering about 15,000 people are killed by criminals with guns each year, I'd say that 1.5 million defensive uses is "enough." Even if these surveys vastly overestimate the number of such uses, and only one in ten of the reported number of defensive gun uses actually saved someone's life, the benefits of private gun ownership still far outweigh the losses. Not to mention, banning private gun ownership would get rid of those defensive uses by citizens, but wouldn't get rid of the criminal uses. Just as England, DC, and Australia have seen crime rates rise following gun bans, and just as Germany still suffered a recent mass shooting despite its strong gun-control laws, so too would heavier restrictions on private gun ownership prove ineffective were we to enact some kind of federal law.
John says:
The problem is that limitting gun ownership isn't going to solve the problem. Responsible, good people don't go on shooting rampages, and restricting their ability to own weapons isn't going to change that. Psychopaths that do go on shooting rampages have plenty of options for obtaining black market weapons even if there's a ban, so it won't change there, either.
Honestly? There's really nothing that *can* be done about it. If someone really wants to kill someone else, they're going to do it, by hook or by crook. Guns certainly make it easier to do so, but there's no way to completely preclude someone from obtaining them — see the "war on drugs" and how effective it's been at keeping illegal things out of the hands of people that really want them.
In the end, if gun control *worked*, I'd be all for it. But unfortunately, all it does is restrict liberties of good, honest people — the criminals will just be breaking one more law that they don't abide by in the first place.
comrade x says:
As for the effectiveness of Tasers go. let me provide an excerpt from a sarcastic little book titled " World's Worst Weapons":
" Tasers are easily defeated by heavy clothing, however, even assuming the user can shoot accurately enough to hit the target with both darts, and reloading takes too long to be viable in combat. It is perhaps telling that when police use tasers on a suspect, several other officers stand by to use more robust methods if the taser fails to have the desired effect."
Plus the range is short- it can shoot out to 10 meters, but accurately only out to about 3 meters.
Pepper spray has an even shorter range. That's way too close to someone that wishes to do you bodily harm.
Until society decides to address the problems of poverty, alienation, and mental illness in a serious manner, I will keep my shotgun in my house, thank you very much.
mike says:
You are stupid.
ladiesbane says:
Or, conversely, this lady could have used strong language:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/laworder/story/9C58494B45470714862574F3006D0CA6?OpenDocument
— Of course, that didn't help her the first time.
Ed says:
Wow, and you only had to go back six months (story date: 10/31/08) to find an anecdotal example that weakly makes the counterpoint. How many mass shootings have we had in that timespan?
But hey, you're right, a shooting rampage per week is a small price to pay for some woman getting to shoot, rather than taser, her rapist once every six months. Arming everyone to the teeth is really the only sensible solution – and best of all, one with no downside.
Too bad the woman in that story wasn't in Binghamton the other day, she could have pretended like she was going to stop the guy who murdered 14 people while wildly shooting in his general direction.
Aside from all that, though, excellent point.
Schultzenhaben says:
I read the "Yahoo!" version of this news story first (which, is undoubtedly less reliable than CNN) and this whole thing makes me never want to return to the US. The Yahoo! story says:
"Poplawski had feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon," said Edward Perkovic, his best friend."
Wow. I used to live in Pittsburgh. Screw that; I'm staying in Australia where there are less heavily-armed idiots. Really. Why the hell would I want to come back when I read all kinds of shit like this?
On a side note, I dislike the title of this post. It seems that he didn't really want to defend his (mother's) home, he just wanted to shoot himself some coppers but was too lazy to go out and find any. What a 'tard.
Sorry, I don't actually mean to insult mentally handicapped people in that way.
Here's the Yahoo! link if anyone is interested: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090405/ap_on_re_us/pittsburgh_shooting
Dingus McGee says:
Looking through the comments of that St. Louis Today article posted by Ladiesbane, I found this gem:
I think the title of the story should be changed to "Woman Kills Negro;" it probably would attract SO much more positive attention. /snark.
ladiesbane says:
Ed, it was past my bedtime, and I pulled something out of my hat. But you're the logic guy, so please remind me: what's the fallacy that says recent anecdotes aren't superior to older anecdotes? (Ooh, it happened in October, so it doesn't count.) And what's the fallacy that says one example doesn't make or break the rule? It applies to us both, I know. And I know you have lots of other examples. So do I. A battle of the anecdotes is empty, but letting yours go without something to balance it out was not happening.
I don't expect you to track my own personal replies, but I chose this one because of my point during the guns-on-campus thread: we may be equals under the law, but I'm a girl and I'm five feet tall — just about any 98 pound weakling can dominate me. Some people view me as prey specifically because I'm too small to fight back successfully. And even if I were a black belt who mastered every weapon style, I'm still proper fucked if there's more than one guy involved. Some idiots think "I don't want to take self-defense courses because I shouldn't have to." These girls are easy victims. That mentality is also squeamish about guns because baaaad men use them. Good people use them too.
You seem to think guns are never (or too rarely) used safely and for a good/practical purpose — even a necessary one. They are. Other people have explained it very well. If you still don't agree, that's fine, but please explain to me how I'm supposed to make a guy back up (avoiding conflict by prevention) or stop him if he proceeds — using something other than a gun to do so. I know my personal experience, and the experiences of people I know, can't be meaningful to you. But do you expect me to discount it because my past doesn't fit with your headlines, and the conclusions you draw from them? And if you were me, what would you think?
ladiesbane says:
* ARE superior; sorry.
Ed says:
The anecdote isn't less meaningful because it's old. The point is that you had to go back six months to find one that fit your argument, whereas I get a new mass shooting every 7-10 days to prove my point. You're cherry-picking. Find the one story that comes along every once in a while ("Old lady defends home with gun!" "Concealed carry prevents mugging!") and ignore the couple hundred gun murders every month that are in no way heroic, justified, or useful to your argument.
Your comments seem to prove what has always been my contention about concealed carry and gun ownership for defending one's home: the only purpose it seems to serve is to provide a psychological benefit to the owner/carrier. Your peace of mind is not worth a mass shooting per week. Sorry. Get a Taser. They can stop a rhinoceros from 15 feet, certainly enough to make your male aggressor Back Away. The fact that you prefer to carry a gun for this peace of mind is just that – a preference. Your preference. Which is fine, but the purpose of government is to serve the interest of the whole, not to cater to individual preferences. Hence myriad laws restricting firearms ownership.
Concealed carry isn't making you safer, you just think it is. And it certainly isn't making society a less dangerous place. That trade-off is not worth it to me. It just isn't. Five decades of increasingly shrill 'Protect the 2nd Amendment, the most important of all Amendments!' rhetoric have done nothing except put a lot of guns in the hands of violent people, and now the same people who made said argument seem to think that the appropriate solution is to put guns in the hands of every decent, law-abiding person to "even the score" or whatever. My point is not that guns are never used for a practical, useful purpose; it's that the times at which they AREN'T far outweigh the utility of the times at which they are.
Matthew says:
"…please explain to me how I’m supposed to make a guy back up (avoiding conflict by prevention) or stop him if he proceeds — using something other than a gun to do so."
-ladiesbane, April 5th, 2009 at 10:18 am
"But hey, you’re right, a shooting rampage per week is a small price to pay for some woman getting to shoot, rather than taser, her rapist once every six months."
-Ed, April 5th, 2009 at 2:00 am
That's AMAZING! Ed actually went back in time eight hours and answered that question! Or maybe somebody just didn't read the response in the first place.
But no, I'm going to go with the answer that includes tachyon fields and flux capacitors. It's much cooler.
Nick says:
Ed: You keep saying that defensive gun uses don't happen "enough" but provide no evidence to that effect. On the contrary, studies done by organizations such as Gallup, the LA Times, and CNN have found between 750,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses every year. This includes a study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which fell right in the middle of the group with an estimate of 1.5 million uses per year. Considering about 15,000 people are killed by criminals with guns each year, I'd say that 1.5 million defensive uses is "enough." Even if these surveys vastly overestimate the number of such uses, and only one in ten of the reported number of defensive gun uses actually saved someone's life, the benefits of private gun ownership still far outweigh the losses. Not to mention, banning private gun ownership would get rid of those defensive uses by citizens, but wouldn't get rid of the criminal uses. Just as England, DC, and Australia have seen crime rates rise following gun bans, and just as Germany still suffered a recent mass shooting despite its strong gun-control laws, so too would heavier restrictions on private gun ownership prove ineffective were we to enact some kind of federal law.
John says:
The problem is that limitting gun ownership isn't going to solve the problem. Responsible, good people don't go on shooting rampages, and restricting their ability to own weapons isn't going to change that. Psychopaths that do go on shooting rampages have plenty of options for obtaining black market weapons even if there's a ban, so it won't change there, either.
Honestly? There's really nothing that *can* be done about it. If someone really wants to kill someone else, they're going to do it, by hook or by crook. Guns certainly make it easier to do so, but there's no way to completely preclude someone from obtaining them — see the "war on drugs" and how effective it's been at keeping illegal things out of the hands of people that really want them.
In the end, if gun control *worked*, I'd be all for it. But unfortunately, all it does is restrict liberties of good, honest people — the criminals will just be breaking one more law that they don't abide by in the first place.
comrade x says:
As for the effectiveness of Tasers go. let me provide an excerpt from a sarcastic little book titled " World's Worst Weapons":
" Tasers are easily defeated by heavy clothing, however, even assuming the user can shoot accurately enough to hit the target with both darts, and reloading takes too long to be viable in combat. It is perhaps telling that when police use tasers on a suspect, several other officers stand by to use more robust methods if the taser fails to have the desired effect."
Plus the range is short- it can shoot out to 10 meters, but accurately only out to about 3 meters.
Pepper spray has an even shorter range. That's way too close to someone that wishes to do you bodily harm.
Until society decides to address the problems of poverty, alienation, and mental illness in a serious manner, I will keep my shotgun in my house, thank you very much.