On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Michael Hipp wrote: > Net Llama! wrote: > >> What I've never understood (and would genuinely like to understand) is >> how the right to bear arms benefits anyone? Sure, you can hunt animals in >> the woods, but I've never heard anyone getting fired up over the potential >> loss of that right. Most folks get very ticked off that they lose their >> right to defend themselves. What exactly are you defending yourself from? >> Unless I'm missing something (and perhaps I am), the only time a gun >> benefits you is when the person attacking you has a smaller/weaker gun, or >> no gun at all. And as we all know, in an arms race, there are no winners, >> only losers. When it comes down to it, unless you distrust the govt, such >> that you feel that you're going to need to defend yourself from their >> attack, what good is a gun going to do you? And if the govt is coming >> after you, the odds of you having sufficient & large enough weapons & ammo >> are just about nil. >> >> So, can someone actually help me to understand all of this? I honestly >> would like to understand it better. > > Thank you. We should all be so willing to learn and listen. Kudos.
And I thank you for taking the time & effort to explain the issues in sane, rational terms, rather than how many others have done. > I've seen little evidence that "blue state" (urban, coastal) voters care > a whit about the right to defend themselves. They seem to think the > police will do it for them even tho the stats prove otherwise and the > courts have ruled otherwise. If people from those areas actually have > ever even thought about such, I'd be relived to hear it. Which stats & court ruling are you referring to here? > My passion to keep and bear arms comes from my desire to defend myself, > my family, and my community from: > > 1. Dangerous or feral animals > 2. The common criminal > 3. Government violence > 4. Foreign invasion > > I've listed them somewhat in order of likely occurrence at this moment > in time. If I lived in the city the first two would certainly be > swapped. It's the second one that is the pivotal one for most of us. But > increasingly the third or fourth. > > Here's a simple fact that has been true for a long time. Statistics from > the US Dept of Justice show that you are several times more likely to > successfully defend yourself from criminal aggression if you are using a > firearm. got a URL for those stats? > Another *very* well researched fact. Americans use firearms to defend > themselves from criminal aggression from 800,000 (low estimate) to 2.4 > million times per year. Far more times than firearms are used to commit > crimes. It's easy to see from these numbers (and many more) that > firearms in the hands of citizens are a net benefit to society. How are they a net benefit? The only studies that I've read about, link the recent drops in crime to changes in demographics, not an increase in those carrying guns. > More examples. The UK has outlawed essentially all firearms. They've > also essentially outlawed defending ones self from violence. Seemingly > without a whimper from the citizens. Before this crime was much lower in > Britain than here and was on the decline while ours was climbing. Now, > the overall crime rate there is twice the US and climbing while ours is > declining. Check the crime rates in Australia since outlawing handguns > and semiautomatic rifles a few years ago. See the URLs that I posted in reply to Bruce yesterday which refute all of this. In a nutshell, the reason that the crimerate seems to have increased is due to how the statistics were compiled. Basically, the UK counts crimes that the US does not. When both countries are measured via the same criteria, the UK actually has a significantly lower crime rate than the US. Ditto for Australia. > A significant part of this is the passage of "right to carry" laws in > some 2/3 of the states. Crime rates go down when citizens 'bear'. Crime > rates go up when then don't carry. They go really up when citizens > aren't even allowed to 'keep' even in their own homes (e.g. Washington > DC, Chicago). Again, see the URL I posted yesterday. This isn't true. In DC the crime rate has been basically unchanged since guns were banned in homes. > I will assert that it is a "settled question". Not really, other than for those who have settled on a decision. > The third and fourth (defending against the government and foreign > invasion) are the ones that make many people roll their eyes. Pretty much :) > Now, the 3rd - government violence. > > First, a statistic that should need no explanation. Based especially on > the last hundred years, you're far more likely to suffer violence at the > hands of your own government than any common criminal, religion, or > other non-state source. The prime examples: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's > Russia, Pol Pot, Mao's China as well as numerous examples from Africa. > Note also the killing of some 200,000 civilians in the Philippines by US > Government troops. And we'll leave out actual declared wars such as the > fission bombs dropped on Japan. > > The biggest threat any of us face is government. > > (I will point out that all the specific examples cited above excepting > the Philippines were done by leftist governments. Not sure what that > means for voting when your choices are a leftist Democrat or a leftist > Republican.) > > So which question do you find more pressing? > - Do we need to defend against the US Government? > - Do we have the ability to defend against the US Government? > > I'm going to leave the first question as obvious. How many more years of > GW Bush (or Clinton or Nixon or Kerry or Dole) would it take to > actually wake us up to fear our own government? Fear & distrust are not the same thing. I distrust the government, but that isn't something new. Then again, I distrust most forms of authority until proven otherwise. > To the notion of using my AR-15 or my M1-A to fight off an attack by the > US Government, most people would reasonably ask something like "You > really expect to be able to do that? You really think you could win?" > > To which the obvious answer is: "No, I don't." > > But neither do I think it is necessary. > > I give you a word: Insurgent. > > Another: Guerrilla. > > Here's a simple fact from the history books of the post-WW II era. The > guerrillas almost always win. No matter how big the superpower. No > matter how thoroughly they control all the key assets. No matter how > ruthless they are. Sure, but they also take alot of losses, and they don't win quickly. And usually what's left of the country when the dust settles seems hardly worth the fight. I'm not at all advocating that its better to just let the govt strip its citizens of all their rights, but I also don't see that guerrilla warfare is neccesarily a good alternative. > But let me, please, be clear on one thing: I do not want this war. I > won't start it. I'll avoid it as long as it can. I'm not a terrorist nor > "anti-government". I want freedom. I want my constitutional rights and > to be left alone. It is *they* (Bush, Clinton, Feinstein, Daly, Kennedy, > Frist, etc.) who make war on my rights, my family, my very ability to > exist. I simply have weighed the evidence and realized that it is coming > no matter what I do. For starters I'm not all that convinced that the number of people with guns equals the number of people willing to fight the govt in a protracted war. Going into the woods to hunt deer, or keeping a gun in your house to defend against the unliklihood of a criminal is vastly different than going off to war against your own govt. Then, as you noted, the disintegration of our rights has been a slow process. Most folks don't even notice until/unless it impacts them directly (and for most, it doesn't, or there would be a huge rallying cry against it by now). We're not talking about an overnight communist revolution where we have democracy today, and none tomorrow. Its much harder to rally people off to war if they don't even notice that what you're rallying against happened. I guess I'm just not as optimistic as you that the gun carrying citizens of the US are going to topple their govt some day in our lifetimes. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lonni J Friedman [EMAIL PROTECTED] LlamaLand http://netllama.linux-sxs.org _______________________________________________ [email protected] Unsub/Pause/Etc : http://mail.linux-sxs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
