Your example just supports my belief that strict gun control is necessary. Person who had the fire arm is an instructor who no doubt had a lot of professional training, passed a lot of background checks and is an example of what works and that the training and checks he went through should be the norm for all. |
Yes yes I'm sure he needed a lot of training to use a firearm to scare some one off just by pulling it out.
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Don’t worry OP, just enjoy the fact that you and your children are significantly less likely to die simply because you don’t have a gun easily available in your home.
Having a gun in your home is basically a Darwinian filter. |
| I own guns for several reasons. First I enjoy target shooting with pistols and rifles, as well and shooting sporting clays with a shotgun. My son and I are also occasional hunters, mostly deer and duck. I also keep a loaded pistol in a small safe that is discretely affixed to my bedside table. And finally, I enjoy collecting and investing in antique guns. All of that said, I wouldn’t consider myself a gun nut, I’m not a member of the NRA and find many of their stances rigid and extreme, and I support universal background checks and raising the minimum age to purchase to 21, although I don’t think either will have much to effect on mass shootings. |
This is a nice idea but I don't believe it is realistic. Law-abiding people would follow a gun ban; criminals would not. How would you get weapons out of the hands of gangs today? I've been on the fence for years about gun rights and ownership. Years of my husband trying to talk me off the fence didn't work. I even made him get rid of his firearms, because children. But the events since the last presidential election + looking more in depth at gun rights advocacy and arguments - these things have pushed me towards getting a weapon. I'm planning to teach my kids how to shoot too. I might even join the NRA soon. Some of the stuff in the news is just plain nuts; its like people have lost their damn minds. |
There are approximately two million defensive gun uses (DGU's) per year by law abiding citizens. That was one of the findings in a national survey conducted by Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist in 1993. Prior to Dr. Kleck's survey, thirteen other surveys indicated a range of between 800,000 to 2.5 million DGU's annually. However these surveys each had their flaws which prompted Dr. Kleck to conduct his own study specifically tailored to estimate the number of DGU's annually. Subsequent to Kleck's study, the Department of Justice sponsored a survey in 1994 titled, Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms (text, PDF). Using a smaller sample size than Kleck's, this survey estimated 1.5 million DGU's annually. There is one study, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which in 1993, estimated 108,000 DGU's annually. Department of Justice studies; government funded studies: these are highly reliable and above the political fray. They all demonstrate that defensive fun uses are extremely common; more common than most Americans realize (and which the press almost never admits). Link: http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html |