Gun laws do they work

[Frothingslosh]

Does reasonable force Include a gun?

Looking it up, it's complicated.

Here's a good overview of the British legal concepts of 'self defense' and reasonable force'. You'll probably want an hour or two free before you start it.

http://www.bsdgb.co.uk/index.php?Information:Law_Relating_to_Self_Defence

 

[ColinEssex]

It's a pretty safe assumption, I have been to Texas. And about 20 states including Mexico and Canada.

So you have been to 21 states - Texas and 20 others which include Mexico and Canada.
When did Mexico and Canada become included in the states? The last I heard is that Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth.

Surely you mean 20 states in addition to Mexico and Canada.

Col

 

[ColinEssex]

Does reasonable force Include a gun?

No, your average householder is not allowed to have a gun. Have you learnt nothing?

It is illegal in the UK to have a gun unless exceptional reasons. You need strict permits. Exceptional reasons could be a farmer with a shotgun, a gun club where guns stay at the club.
It is also illegal to carry a knife, unless very good reason, like a chef carrying his tools to work.

Col

 

[AccessBlaster]

So you have been to 21 states - Texas and 20 others which include Mexico and Canada.
When did Mexico and Canada become included in the states? The last I heard is that Canada is still part of the British Commonwealth.

Surely you mean 20 states in addition to Mexico and Canada.

Col

You're a copy editor who does not get paid, congratulations.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I'm going to go out on a limb here. If I recall correctly, the word "THUG" derives from a word in a language other than English where the transliterated root is "thugee" which relates to groups of "assassins" or "paid muscle mobs" or "assailants for hire." Since the word didn't originate from English, don't jab at my spelling. The more modern usage of the word "THUG" is just language drift from the older meaning of people who did bad things to you for money. I think that means that the guys who put together TV programming schedules or who create obnoxious commercial spots for TV qualify as thugs. But I digress...

On the recent part of the thread, Louisiana has a "shoot the burglar" law. In my home state, if you find a stranger coming into your house using anything other than an unlocked door, you are expressly permitted by that law to presume that the use of force to enter the house is a reasonable prediction of that person's intent to perform other acts of violence. However, special-case exceptions exist under this law.

For example, if you find that the person is LEAVING your house violently (say, such as jumping out of a window), you CANNOT presume impending violence to yourself and therefore cannot shot that person in the back. You are not allowed to set booby traps in front of windows, such as a shotgun aimed at the window and triggered by some mechanism related to opening the window in a non-standard way. Other special cases also exist. However, if you are in your house and hear breaking glass; you investigate; and you find a person who just broke in with a burglar tool such as a prybar, you have every right to fear for your life (from bludgeoning) and immediately blow that person away. You are not required by that law to stop and ask the person's intent.

If I recall correctly, that law does NOT protect you if the person is on your porch knocking on your door and you choose to pull the trigger from the other side of the door - even if you believe you recognize that person as having committed violence in your area beforehand. We had a case like that recently and the guy pulling the trigger was arrested for homicide (generically used in this case). I don't know what happened after that other than that it was not charged as 1st-degree murder.

The point I'm making is that our laws, while allowing some violence, do not allow someone's presence on your property (but NOT inside your house) to be an automatic target. As violent as we seem, our laws don't grant blanket immunity to folks with itchy trigger fingers.

Now to the main question of this thread: Do gun control laws work? My take is NO. Such laws cannot work any better then liquor control laws or drug control laws or campaign finance reform laws because the people who want guns, liquor, drugs, or illegal advertising will find a way to get what they want. As long as it is possible to get a gun, those who want them will have them. At best you could hope to impose some degree of order on the situation via licensing and imposing stiff penalties for misuse.

 

[spikepl]

The point I'm making is that our laws, while allowing some violence, do not allow someone's presence on your property (but NOT inside your house) to be an automatic target.

Not quite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori

 

[Brianwarnock]

WOW, I'm glad I never knocked on anybody's door during any of my visits to the States, and I'm sure as hell glad I don't live there.

Brian

 

[ColinEssex]

As violent as we seem, our laws don't grant blanket immunity to folks with itchy trigger fingers.

Obviously that doesn't apply to the police who have total freedom to kill unarmed people by shooting them, even better if you can shoot them in the back especially if they are black.

Col

 

[ColinEssex]

You're a copy editor who does not get paid, congratulations.

I do it merely to help foreigners in their attempt at grasping English language, otherwise, their statements can look pretty silly.

I realise geography is not your strong point, so if you need help, just ask.

Col

 

[Frothingslosh]

We had a case like that recently and the guy pulling the trigger was arrested for homicide (generically used in this case). I don't know what happened after that other than that it was not charged as 1st-degree murder.

It happened in my neck of the woods. Her name was Renisha McBride, and she'd been in a car accident and was knocking on doors in the middle of the night to try to get help.

Theodor Wafer, a white 55 year-old man, answered the door and shot her in the face through his screen door point blank with his 12-gauge shotgun. He eventually told police the discharge had been an accident.

The jury disagreed and found him guilty of 2nd degree murder. (For non-Americans who may not know, that just means it was intentional but not planned ahead of time.) He was sentenced to 17 to 32 years in prison (15 to 30 for murder, 2 for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony). He was actually a little lucky - it wasn't tried as a hate crime, and even second degree murder can come with a life sentence.

Now mind you, with good behavior, he can probably be out in as little as 8 years.

 

[Frothingslosh]

Not quite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Yoshihiro_Hattori

Note that the soft responses were from the South, and the prison term in the north. As a rule of thumb, the South tends to be a bit more accepting of using lethal force to defend your home. Also, conservatives tend to be more accepting of it than liberals, and the South has always been MUCH more conservative overall than the North.

 

[spikepl]

Apparently many Americans eternally live in fear for their lives, hence the so-called "laws" (yup, these "laws" are a nonsensical abomination when viewed from the outside with a mindset not stuck on guns).

 

[Frothingslosh]

Apparently many Americans eternally live in fear for their lives, hence the so-called "laws" (yup, these "laws" are a nonsensical abomination when viewed from the outside with a mindset not stuck on guns).

The NRA, the conservative media, and the GOP play it for all its worth - that fear keeps them in power. It's no different than all the 'Terror Alert' raising and lowering that went on during the Bush administration. "What, someone noticed that this bill might kill jobs? LOOK THE TERROR ALERT IS ORANGE NOW!!!!"

It's been happening since at LEAST the Red Scare, if not longer; it's just that today it's Arabs instead of Communists. Poor black people have been the fear folks like to bring up as the back-up since, oh, 1865-ish.

 

[AnthonyGerrard]

How common would it be for an American to either have to show a weapon, or be shown a gun as way of threat?

I can only think of one person I know in the uk, who has experience of being robbed at gunpoint. Well he wasn't in the end - he told them to piss off.

 

[Frothingslosh]

The vast majority of people don't go around showing off weapons. In fact, threatening someone with a gun is usually a crime in and of itself - you might be allowed to CARRY the weapon, but you should only pull it when you expect to need it. Using it to threaten someone is, in most jurisdictions, illegal unless you can prove you needed to do so in self-defense, and for that to stick, you need to be in a situation where it would have been legal to shoot.

That said, every now and then you'll see some whackjob carrying their rifles with them as they shop, but that's them pretending they're badasses fighting The (Black) Man (In The White House). Everyone I know who actually carries for a sensible reason either has a CPL (concealed pistol license) (2 people) or uses a visible holster (1 person) for their pistol. (I'm not counting people who carry as part of their jobs, such as police, but they generally fall into the second category). None of them take their ARs shopping with them.

The truth is that the people hauling their rifles with them as they shop are doing two things: trying to intimidate gun control advocates, and showing which people need to be shot first if there's a violent robbery. (Really happened - someone was trying to rob a Sam's Club, and some open carry advocate grabbed his rifle and started angling for a shot. The robber's backup pulled her pistol, walked up behind him, and blew his head off.)

If I were going to rob a store, didn't mind killing people, and saw a few folks carrying their rifles, believe me I'd just find a position where I could take them all out while they're still trying to figure out what's going on and/or trying to pull the rifles off their backs. It doesn't help them that the typical civilian reaction in a spot like that is to freeze, and it doesn't take but a couple seconds to shoot them all while they're still going "Huh?".

And for the record, the one time I got robbed, they used a baseball bat, not a gun.

Anyway, you may see more of the gun-waving and gun threats if you hang out with gangs or drug runners a lot, and if you go shopping at Wal-Mart, especially in deeply-conservative areas (as they're the always the ones shopping with assault rifles). Otherwise, you're very very unlikely to ever see a gun pulled for any reason. It really isn't like in the movies.

 

[spikepl]

In this instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jordan_Davis the shooter got convicted. But it doesn't bring the dead one back to life. Elsewhere people might get into a fist fight, with a tooth or two missing, but nothing as deadly.

When guns are at hand, they get used - no mystery about that!

 

[Frothingslosh]

In this instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jordan_Davis the shooter got convicted. But it doesn't bring the dead one back to life. Elsewhere people might get into a fist fight, with a tooth or two missing, but nothing as deadly.

When guns are at hand, they get used - no mystery about that!

I remember that one. SOB didn't even try very hard to hide the fact that he just got pissed and decided to (try to) kill everyone in the car. If he'd really just been trying to defend himself, he'd have called the cops rather than trying to just go back home (4 counties away) the next day and pretend nothing had happened.

I really do think this one was a case where he was going to attack those kids regardless of what weapon was available.

 

[AccessBlaster]

The definition of asinine.

When guns are at hand, they get used - no mystery about that!

 

[spikepl]

The definition of asinine.

Indeed. :

 

[The_Doc_Man]

I will not disagree that guns get used inappropriately, but so do other weapons. It is one man's not-so-humble opinion that a big part of the problem comes about because our schools don't teach kids about conflict resolution. The parents usually don't want someone to teach their kids to be civil based on someone else's definition of civility. Worse, the parents probably never learned that concept either.

The result is that kids don't know how to resolve conflicts with less than lethal force. Then they grow up to be adults who don't know how to resolve conflicts with less than lethal force - and there is where a lot of the publicized violence occurs.

Col, you made a passing reference to how cops seem to have a free pass on violence and on shooting unarmed people. They don't, but all too frequently the result in which the officer is arrested, tried, convicted, and put in jail is not made public because the police departments see the news media as enemies, too. Sadly, I don't always disagree with the police hierarchy when the media in question are seeking the next sensational headline for viewership / readership issues rather than newsworthiness.