Quora: Should gun owners limit hobby to save a child's life?

[kevm14]

Look at it this way.

There are an estimated—ESTIMATED—500M firearms currently in circulation in the U.S., and around 150M are in criminal hands—at least. Since any home invader, car jacker, mugger, etc., could reasonably assume he/she would be facing the possibility of armed resistance, the chance that they would be armed as well is very high.

There are now more guns than people in the United States

The police are called “first responders” for a reason. They respond to crimes, they rarely are in a position to prevent them. They show up in the aftermath to clean up the scene. The average response time to truly emergency calls is 9 minutes in most metropolitan areas. Imagine the chaos that can happen in nine minutes, and that’s an average response time. Given the volume of calls, the location of the crime, and distance the from the scene of the nearest officer, possible confusion over the location, a crime happening in a rural location, etc., the true response time could be considerably longer. Even under the best of circumstances, “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away”.

In New Orleans, call 911 and wait for an hour

Furthermore, when police arrive, they have no idea of the true circumstances, who the shooter is vs the victim, and have to assess the situation before they can take action—possibly more minutes lost. That’s true whether it’s a private home, a school, a bank or a mugging.

Just as an example, in the Fort Hood shooting, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on a crowded waiting room. The 911 call went out almost immediately, two traffic cops nearby responded and were on scene in SEVEN minutes. In that amount of time, Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 30 others including one of the responding officers. He emptied six 15 round magazines from a semi-automatic handgun, partially emptied a seventh before being brought down, and had three others in reserve. The two responding officers were at the scene minutes ahead of MP’s and SWAT, but were unable to prevent 43 people from being shot—in seven minutes.

2009 Fort Hood shooting - Wikipedia

Certainly that’s a unique situation—packed victims, shooter seeking a high body count and deliberately targeting victims at random—but it illustrates how rapidly confrontation can turn into chaos.

It’s been estimated—again, firm numbers are really not possible to track—that private citizens use their weapons in self defense around 2.5M times annually. That’s doesn’t mean they discharge their weapons, only that they use them to deter possible assault. In doing so, they kill twice as many criminals as police. Here’s that link.

How often are guns used to stop crimes?

There are several pages of links on each of the points I’ve outlined above, and numbers may vary depending on the link, but the numbers quoted are reasonably accurate.

Banning certain types of firearms is not an answer. “Long guns” like shotguns and rifles are not popular with criminals—they’re comparatively expensive and difficult to conceal—and, depending on the source, account for around 2% to 6% of all firearm homicides annually—the vast majority of firearm homicides involve handguns, and 80% of those in the hands of criminal are obtained illegally—stolen, bought using fraudulent information, or bought on the street.

Homicide Data by Weapon - Marginal REVOLUTION

Note that the higher number quotes ALL firearm deaths that aren’t by accident or suicide and includes criminals killed by victims defending themselves. The incidence of deliberate murders using long guns is much closer to the lower number IMO.

Banning firearms outright is not an answer, either—it would require passing an amendment to nullify the Second which would ultimately require ratification by at least 38 states—not going to happen, period. Trying to ban or confiscate all guns would face massive pushback, create a huge constitutional crisis and make instant felons of the estimated 150M gun owners who would resist such moves. Plus, if it was successful, it would succeed only in disarming law abiding gun owners—criminals don’t respect or follow firearm laws. That would leave an unarmed citizenry vulnerable to a heavily armed criminal element—imagine the consequences. Here’s a link you might find interesting:

Case Study: Morton Grove, Illinois v. Kennesaw, Georgia

It’s only one example, surely, and a microcosm of the national picture, but worth noting.

Keep in mind also that, despite the current attention being given to firearm incidents in this country, since the early ‘90’s there has been a steady decrease in all crimes of violence including murders and assaults using firearms. Here’s that link:
https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/...

Whatever your thoughts about our “gun culture”, the reality is not going to change any time soon if ever, so we need to deal with it as it is. Realistic gun regulations are fine, but, again, criminals don’t respect gun laws, and what is “reasonable” to one person might be seen by another as trampling on our constitutional rights.

In 1994, our population was 263M, today it’s 323M, an increase of 70M people or about a 26% growth. The private ownership of firearms has more or less paralleled the growth in population. Just as one example, in 1994 the number of semi-automatic AR-15 type rifles in private hands was estimated as 1.5M—today estimates place that number from 3.5M to as high as 15M depending on the source.

If firearms in private hands contributed to gun violence, you’d expect the numbers to be considerably higher—instead there’s been a dramatic decrease.

Addendum:
Actually, the 2.5M number of DGUs (defensive gun use) figure has been challenged, and the actual figure is alleged to be closer to 67,740/year. The actual number is debatable, as are all figures regarding the number and uses of firearms in the U.S. Absolute accurate numbers are simply impossible to compile. However, even if we accept the 67,740 figure, that’s still 5,645 incidents a month or 188 a day.

Gun and self-defense statistics that might surprise you -- and the NRA

[kevm14]

There are currently over 100 answers to this question, so I’ll keep this short and sweet <s>, and add my personal experience.

Law enforcement officers do the best they can, with the resources they have, based upon the direction of their superiors. Some of those superiors are elected officials, others are men and women who were great cops, but aren’t great leaders or analysts. What does this mean? It means that no matter how good every cop on the street is, there will always be holes in the safety net policing provides. Through those holes, you’re on your own. And, like a net, the coverage of law enforcement is spread out, and stretched thin.

For example, my wife called me with a disturbing event at our home. Without getting into details, a likely mentally ill person was on our property, making outlandish claims, scaring the crap out of my wife who was home alone with 4 small children. I told her to hang up, lock all the doors and windows, and call 9–1–1. She did. I was 30 minutes away. Guess who got to my house first? The suspect/crazy person had left the area by the time I made it home. The local law enforcement officers eventually showed up, and I kind of feel bad for them, because I gave them an ear-full. Did those individual officers deserve to be berated? Probably not, but hopefully I was just enough of an ******* to encourage them to mention it to their supervisor.

After the same thing happened on another occasion (this time just a drunk neighbor making a fool of himself, no one in any real danger), I filed a formal complaint with my local government representative. Nothing has been done.

An ambulance was called to my house, and they took over 30 minutes to respond. Yes, we live in a rural area, but not that rural, the fire station is 5 minutes away, and the hospital is only 20. These events were spread out over a couple of years mind you, its not like we need emergency services THAT often, LOL. Needless to say, we’re relocating.

The moral of the story here? Be prepared, you might be on your own for longer than you think you are. It doesn’t just mean owning (AND training with) a firearm for personal protection. That’s a big part, but also know first-aid, CPR, and where to get poison information when you need it. Practice with a fire-extinguisher, and run fire-drills at home. All of this is part of it, and having all the right tools means having a fire-extinguisher, first-aid kit, and yes, a firearm.

BONUS POINTS: For those of you that read this far, I’m going to throw in some entertainment value. This is my new standard line if I need law enforcement at my location from now on… “Don’t worry, the bodies will still be here when your officer finally arrives. Hopefully they’ll still be warm.”

I need to amplify this because it is very important:

Be prepared, you might be on your own for longer than you think you are.

This applies to many scenarios, including simple power outages. There is something fundamentally dangerous about assuming it is the government's job to do everything for you, which usually leads to giving them more of your money in the form of taxes, and them being given more and more power. That's not the way to go.

[kevm14]

How do ordinary words turn into dog-whistles?

Gun control is essentially skilled handling of a gun, not playing with it, not pointing it at something you don’t want to shoot, not resting your finger on the trigger unless in preparation to fire, in short, to control it, as one would a car for example…

But it has become a phrase used for less worthy purposes. Gun control is not gun control as the OP uses it, imo, but “people control”, such that some third party is granted authority to choose which citizen may or may not own, carry or use a gun, what kind of gun he may be permitted, etc., etc.

The “justification” then, is not one of the “pro-gun” sort, apologizing for his choice to exercise his inherent right to self-protection, but is a rhetorical argument created by anti-gun folks, who miss the key purpose of 2A. For those folks, there is no explanation they understand, nor will they until government succeeds in doing what they hope for: confiscation.

Limited as they are, on the merits of the question there are several valid responses, all of which are less than 2A’s purpose and significance, yet clearly better than the canard about hunting.

1. The police are not able, nor are they expected to prevent criminal activity…of any sort: armed robbery, murder, mayhem, mass murder. The USSC has already ruled on this very point. So the police are there to enforce laws after they have been violated, to find and bring to justice the criminal. OTOH, you may not like to wait to be robbed at gunpoint, or killed, even knowing that afterward, some sort of justice will be sought by society on the perpetrators. Worst case, you’ll be dead…no, wait, worst case, your dear spouse or your child will be dead. Having the means at your disposal to counteract the perpetrator is among your inherent rights. It is up to the anti-gun crowd to argue that it is not. They cannot.

2. You are not expected to react to every threat with deadly force; even police are restricted from that. But the inherent right to protect yourself does not require that you hand over your days’ wages to some miscreant who demands it, assuming the police will some day catch him and get your money back. Your resistance can make a difference; you do not take his name and stick around for the police if you can stop it from happening in the first place. Heck, if you’ve a mind to, you can stop it and wait for the police.

3. Gun control, which as I already pointed out is “people control”, does not work. The law-abiding citizen is not the major perpetrator of gun violence, and restrictions on his access may inconvenience him to the point of discouragement, but the thug will not be inconvenienced enough, will obtain a weapon…

4. Rape is often considered second to murder as a horrid crime, but the idea that regular men should be fed by law chemical neutering treatments because some men commit rape has the same validity of thinking as the ideas promulgated under the rubric “gun control”.

Gun control is a dog-whistle for gun confiscation. We have already seen the nipping and tucking as automatic weapons, misidentified semiautomatic weapons, large magazine sizes, assault weapons, have been restricted or banned, where threats of criminal prosecution are bandied about under the guise of government “buy-back” programs. The marketing efforts have been going on for years to try to talk people out of the right to keep and bear arms granted by 2A We are not moved.

Those are all great points.

[kevm14]

I’m a "pro-gun American." Why do I think I might not have time to wait for the police? Why am I convinced this is another good argument against gun control?

Start a timer. Indulge me. How much time do you have? Start the clock. Because, time is part of the answer. Give me some time here, and I’ll make a good point. We’re going to talk about:
1) Natural law
2) Response time frames
3) Applicable legal precedent

Natural Law

First things first. Make a good constitutional argument in favor of gun control. That’s my challenge back to you. The problem you’ll encounter is this: the Constitution, and more specifically, the Bill of Rights, is rooted in natural, God-given law. The founding fathers understood that each person has the unalienable right to defend themselves. This is something that most western nations do not recognize. Most western nations disallow the individual right to self-defense. The Second Amendment was ratified, not to grant the right to keep and bear arms to the people, but to affirm the right exists, and to establish that the government is not to infringe on it. That is what you have to overcome. You have to convince thinking people in the United States that they are not entitled to the right to self-defense.

Where’s the clock sitting? Assuming a conversational reading speed, time hack should be about 1 minute.

Response Time Frames
The National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) is the governing body that by and large shapes policy and practice for fire departments across the nation. Depending on who you ask, some of the things NFPA cites are considered little more than good guidelines. One, for instance, is the “two in, two out” rule – two firefighters outside, ready to go, covering two firefighters deployed inside a building. In the thriving town of 150,000 nearby, the paid department runs three man crews on their trucks, and usually dispatches two trucks, one from the closest station, and another from one nearby, theory being, men on the second truck will be on the ground, ready to go in a timely enough fashion to satisfy the requirement.

Another is a response time metric. I may be dated with this, but not too far back in the rear view mirror, the standard was, from the time a station received their call from dispatch, they had two and a half minutes to be in the truck and on the road responding. Two and a half minutes to be out the door and rolling. And then, how long does it take them to get to the call? Well, consider that depending on the furniture and other materials in an average room, a smoldering fire source, once developed into an open flame, can engulf that average room in less than a minute and a half. How much time do you have?

Our time hack is sitting at two minutes, ten seconds.

Did you know approximately three quarters of the firefighters in the United States are volunteers? Some are augmentees serving with a paid department. I’ve seen this in Cedar Park, TX, and Houston, and in some of the county fire stations in Maryland. A good number of volunteers, though, serve in all volunteer departments in smaller municipalities, many of which are mere pin points of population dotting large swaths of rural real estate. These departments have no paid firefighters, are in many cases largely dependant on donations for their operating funds, and often, must rely on neighboring departments to have enough resources on the ground to get the job done. It’s what we referred to as “mutual aid.” On average, it took most of us at least a good three minutes (probably more like five or so) just to get to the fire station. Another couple of minutes to shed our shoes, step into our gear and start en route… depending on how far away the call was from the station, we’re talking a ten minute response time. Or longer. And now, you’re asking what any of this has to do with the gun control question.

How are we doing on time? My clock is ticking at three minutes, five seconds.

How long does it take the police to respond if you dial 911? All those pin points of population dotting large swaths of rural real estate? Precious few of them have a corporate law enforcement presence. Many are covered by the county sheriff’s office (SO), or, depending, the state police (in Texas, the Department of Public Safety, or DPS). Depending on the county and time of day (night time, for our purposes), SO may have two (2) deputies on patrol. Two. Covering the entire county. If they’re in one end of the county and you’re in the other, the response time can well be on the order of fifteen to twenty minutes, and that’s if they’re able to drop everything and run. We worked an accident one night – it was bad – and SO was all tied up. So was DPS; seems there was a slew of accidents that night. Finally, after we’d been on scene for more than half an hour, an officer from a department twenty miles away came to work the accident with us. Four minutes.

Scenario. It’s two in the morning and it really doesn’t matter whether you live in a big metropolitan city, a quaint neighborhood in the ‘burbs, or out on several acres off of a distant farm to market road. I say it doesn’t matter, because bad things happen to good people in the best of places just the same as they do in the worst of places. And at two in the morning, someone is pounding on your door. For the sake of our scenario, we’ll go with a house in the ‘burbs. Or out in the country. Clearly, the person pounding on your door is a lunatic. After all, it’s two in the morning. Things can, initially, go one of two ways. You can open the door just a crack to see what they want (not necessarily a good idea), or, you can look through the peephole, try and ascertain, visually, who’s outside your front door, and ask, through the door, what they want. They just want to use your phone. That’s it. They just want to use the phone. Twenty years ago, maybe. Today, it’s rare to encounter someone who doesn’t have a cell phone. Wisely, you tell them, no, they cannot come in to use your phone. You will, though, call someone for them; what’s the number? There’s no number. The lunatic is wielding an ax. And he begins to lay siege to your front door. How long will your front door stand up to bludgeoning from an ax? How long will it take for you to get 911 operators on the phone? And for them to get responding officers headed your way? And for responding officers to arrive and deal with the mayhem? Before the mayhem breaks in and deals with you?

Five minutes is an eternity when someone is beating on your door with an ax. And our timer is running at five minutes, thirty seconds.

Legal Precedent

On at least two occasions that I can find, Castlerock V Gonzales (2005) and Warren v District of Columbia (1981), the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled that law enforcement does not have a duty to defend, based on what is referred to as “public duty doctrine.” On initial reading, specifically, cases where tragedy may well have been averted had law enforcement been right on top of it all, this position strikes as shallow and void of all compassion and reason. Thing is, even in the movies, not even Superman can be everywhere. Law enforcement officers, likewise, are at the mercy of real world material and time constraints, same as everyone else. Simply put, we cannot depend on others all the time for everything. Each of us must assume some personal accountability and responsibility, and responsibility for self is about as fundamental as it gets. You cannot rely on the 911 system to be the “right now” solution to your worst nightmare when there’s an ax at the door.

Six and a half minutes. From the time we started the clock, to this point, six and half minutes. Seven, if you go, literally, beginning to end. How long will it take help to get to you when you call for it? Can you afford to wait seven minutes for potential life-saving/deadly force help to arrive?

Let me reframe your question: Do I believe “I might not have time to wait for the police” is a solid rationale for owning a firearm? You’re damn right I do.

[kevm14]

We don’t “think” that, we know it, there is statistical data proving our point and its also common sense (which is dangerously rare these days…). It takes less than a minute for you to become part of the violence statistics (e.g. getting robbed, beaten up, raped, stabbed, etc..), a firearm is the best tool in existence for self protection. It also works as an equalizer: a lot of people cannot defend themselves barehanded against an unarmed criminal or group of criminals - with a gun its a different story - sometimes just showing your gun might be enough to make an aggressor think twice.

Gun control not only leaves people defenseless but also makes absolute no sense for various reasons:

- Criminals don’t care about the law, they can either resort to a black market and/or resort to making their own open bolt submachine guns - its very hard to control knowledge.

- School shooters and mass murderers in general go through great lengths to achieve their terrible goals. If it was possible to totally stop them from getting a firearm, they could easily resort to more effective tools like explosives - no, you don’t need a degree in chemistry to make explosives, no wonder why terrorists have been using this method for decades - again, you can’t control knowledge or common chemicals.

- Its extremely wrong to collectively punish the whole society because of the actions of a very small group. It’s not fair to loose your rights because someone else did something wrong. How would you feel if you lost your rights to own and drive a car because some dumb a*ses drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs?

- There are many factors that cause violence in today’s society (e.g. poverty, drugs, etc…) why not take care of those things and drastically reduce violence instead of punishing everyone with legislation that will not solve anything? Just an FYI: the legal gun owners of America are not only law abiding but despise violence and would not think twice before using their guns to stop a bad guy trying to hurt an innocent person - meanwhile anti gun people are saying things like “kill the NRA”.

- Many countries with stricter gun control (e.g. Brazil, Colombia, etc..) are waaaay more violent than the United States - gun control is not a magical solution that will end all the violence. Period.

[kevm14]

Next time someone says, and believes, that pro-gun people are a bunch of rednecks who just want to play with dangerous toys, you can point them here.

[kevm14]

This one is good. Classic failures of left-leaning policy.

Because it is a reasonable argument. Depending on where you live, it can take 11 minutes to over an hour for the police to arrive. That’s plenty of time for you and your children to be raped, dead, or both. In many home invasions, it is a gun that is the difference between literal life and death. There are easily many examples if you just research.

Like these children and teenagers that burglars approached even knowing there were people in the house:
Alabama 11-year-old shoots suspected home invader
South Carolina Boy, 13, Fatally Shoots Burglar, Scares Off Second Suspect: Police
Homeowner’s son kills three would-be burglars with AR-15
Phoenix boy, 14, shoots armed intruder while watching three younger siblings

In fact, the pursuers even followed this girl when she tried to hide away in a closet while she’s calling 9–1–1:
12-Year-Old Girl Shoots Intruder During Home Invasion In Bryan County

Here are examples of attacks on adults in their home when someone broke in and pursued them:
Georgia Mom Shoots Home Invader, Hides With Kids

Father shoots, kills intruder to protect kids, police say; no charges filed

Pennsylvania man, 84, shoots and kills home invader, fights off another

I could go on and on.

Unfortunately, for each one of these stories, there are many, many more stories in which people are raped, beaten, and/or even killed in their own homes. I live outside of the of the top 10 cities in the nation for murder—and you hear some pretty nasty stories on the news, including ones of home invaders taking out a house full of people, including children. You see, in many of the examples I gave above, the home invader came KNOWING that there were people in the house, and therefore intending to do them harm. Even more, they were carrying weapons, often guns.

What pro-gun Americans are sick of trying to explain is that CRIMINALS DON’T CARE ABOUT LAWS—OBVIOUSLY, and therefore gun control will only affect the LAW ABIDING CITIZENS. On the other hand, criminals will continue to buy guns illegally. Rarely are guns used in a crime the product of a legal purchase. They’re usually stolen or smuggled in across the boarder.

Heck, under the Obama administration, the American government even purposely added to the illegal gun cartel by pouring a number of guns into what they called the “Project Gunrunner.” They hoped to “track” the black market guns but “lost” them. Those guns started appearing everywhere—from the hands of Mexican crime lords to murder weapons used against American citizens.

If anti-gun activists care about gun control laws so much, they should be paying way more attention to tactics under the Democratic party. In addition to the Gunrunner scandal, the DOJ under Obama erased the criminal backgrounds of over half a million fugitives, therefore allowing them to once again buy firearms. Why has that not made big news?

BOMBSHELL: Obama's DOJ Forced Deletion Of 500,000 Fugitives From Gun Background Check System

Perhaps we should be wondering how far anti-gun activists up top are willing to go to push their agenda.