Posted on 05/19/2013 5:30:58 AM PDT by rellimpank
New York — Nearly 10 years ago, my mother was robbed in front of our home after getting off her second-shift job.
The hooded mugger stole my mother's purse by knocking her down and wrestling her purse from her shoulder. She injured her wrist and suffered a few scrapes and bruises. The attack shook her up. I was inside watching television with my father when the incident occurred. We didn't hear or see a thing, but that didn't stop us from driving around the neighborhood looking for anyone suspicious.
A week after the incident, I legally purchased my first gun. It was an impulse buy, but it was a decision I made to keep my family safe.
I was raised around guns. On my grandparents' farm, they kept a loaded rifle on the front porch and another one in the living room behind their black and white television. For them, a rifle was not used solely for protection. Guns were used mainly for hunting and, if necessary, for protection.
Nearly half of today's American gun owners report that their main reason for having a gun is protection. Fewer than one-third own a gun for hunting. This is remarkably different from the late 1990s when nearly half of gun owners kept guns mainly for hunting. In 1999, only one-quarter cited protection as their most important reason, according to the Pew Research Center.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
Isn't it racist to say that?
Myth: Handguns are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than a criminal.
Fact: Of the 43 deaths reported in this flawed study, 37 (86%) were suicides. Other deaths involved criminal activity between the family members (drug deals gone bad).
Fact: Of the remaining deaths, the deceased family members include felons, drug dealers, violent spouses committing assault, and other criminals.
Fact: Only 0.1% of the defensive uses of guns results in the death of the predator. This means you are much more likely to prevent a crime without bloodshed than hurt a family member.
Original source citations available upon request.
Ditto that.
Be careful however, there are those on this forum who'll call you a psychotic wanna-be killer for having the resolve to defend yourself and your family from some low-life scumball.
Regards
USC
There is another thread on FreeRepublic right now about a homeowner shooting a burglar. Too bad he didn't read this article and get rid of his gun.
If one's to believe the bovine fecal matter in the article, Homeland Security most definitely is not any safer for being armed to the teeth with so much ammo and so many guns.
Why, it'd be a darn dirty shame if'n Homeland Security ...... nope, I can't say that on here.
“If your goal is to make sure that the intruder is dead and you’re not dead, then you would have to fire at the moment that person is in your vision,”
He’s full of crap.
It depends on distance and relative position, whether you have a covered or concealed position.
It depends on how long it takes to get to your weapon and your training with that weapon.
It also depends on your awareness of the location of other family members.
So just lay down and be a victim, with the darkness owning the guns?? Right, that is real smart! Daaaa!
When seconds count the police are only minutes away!
From “Guns and Self-Defense” by Gary Kleck:
http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html
“It has also been claimed that many people who attempt to use guns for self-protection have the gun taken from them by the criminal and used against them. Although this type of incident is not totally unknown, it too is extremely rare. In the 1979-1985 National-Crime-Victimization-Survey sample, it was possible to identify crime incidents in which the victim used a gun for protection and lost a gun to the offender(s). At most, 1% of defensive gun uses resulted in the offender taking a gun away from the victim. Even these few cases did not necessarily involve the offender snatching a gun out of the victim’s hands. Instead a burglar might, for example, have been leaving a home with one of the household’s guns when a resident attempted to stop him using another household gun. Thus, the 1% figure probably represents an upper limit.”
What if the loaded gun is in a quick-access gun safe?
The question is irrelevant.
It is my right to own a gun.
If I feel safer I am more comfortable.
It takes a Police Officer about 15 minutes to get to my home on a good day. By that time we don’t need him at all except to write the report.
From the article: In a 1993 New England Journal of Medicine study, he pointed out that there is a better chance that the gun meant for protection will be used in domestic violence, suicide or to injure a child. "Believe me when I tell you this. The victims are not the bad guys. It's usually someone that the owner of the gun cares about," he said. "My research showed that a gun owner was 43 times more likely to shoot and kill a family member than that he'd shoot and kill anybody else."
I've read the actual study and quite frankly, I'm shocked that it was even published in what is supposed to be a peer review, scientific journal. The author clearly had an agenda that he wanted to prove rather than conducting an objective study with an open mind to see what the results might be.
Notably absent from the study was any attempt to distinguish legal from illegal gun ownership and justifiable homicide from criminal homicide. The fact that the shooter and the victim are members of the same family or otherwise acquainted is irrelevant. Indeed, I am personally familiar with situations where a person has used a legally owned firearm to justifiably kill a family member or acquaintance in self-defense, just as I am familiar with cases where a "battered woman" might be alive today if she had possessed a firearm to protect herself from her abusive spouse as he pounded the crap out of her with a baseball bat in violation of an order of protection.
From the article:
■ On April, 30, a 5-year-old Kentucky boy killed his 2-year-old sister with a child-sized rifle he got for his birthday. ■ On April, 22, an 11-year-old Delaware boy shot his 7-year-old brother with a 9 mm handgun they found in a home. ■ In March, a 12-year-old Florida boy shot and killed his 16-year-old brother in their home. That shooting came a week after a 4-year-old Orlando boy shot himself in the face in a condominium where he lived.
While these are all tragedies, I can cherry-pick the local headlines in any community to find equally tragic deaths that have nothing to do with firearms, such as an unsupervised child drowning in a backyard pool, choking on a small toy, or falling off a bicycle.
“Fact: Only 0.1% of the defensive uses of guns results in the death of the predator. This means you are much more likely to prevent a crime without bloodshed...”
The public needs to work on this statistic. Society needs a way to cull violent criminals, because incarceration is increasingly expensive and problematic.
“52.4% of sentenced prisoners in state prisons are in for violent crimes. 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails are in for violent crimes. Among *unconvicted* inmates in jails, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates had a current or prior violent offense.”
Because the government is loathe to execute murderers promptly, or even execute other violent offenders at all, the citizenry is forced to do so. That they would prefer to *not* do so has *not* been left to them as an option.
Thus it is essential to society that armed persons act as judge, jury and executioner whenever the opportunity presents itself against violent offenders committing crimes.
That you would prefer to chase them off or capture them for the authorities is close to reckless endangerment to other people. Instead of killing a rabid dog, you have just driven it off to attack others.
“This study is bullshit. I just flat-ass don’t believe it.”
I wanted to say that. :-)
Twenty years later, this is relevant how? If that's the best the opposition can do, they are in serious trouble, indeed.
Am I safer? Heck yes. And to be absolutely certain, I've resumed going to the range, something I had to put on "hold" while caring for a terminally ill loved one. Thank you for all of your wisdom and guidance, .45MAN.
Try getting in and find out.
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