FINALLY!

I've been running this blog for about six months now, and finally I've attracted the attention of a GFW an anti. It goes by the (appropriate) nom de plume of "flamebait," and like all its type does not leave a valid e-mail address.

First, in response to One More Example it left this comment:

Keep arming yourselves against murderers and rapists it still won't help you.

You are far more likely to die when your super polluting SUV rolls over.

Or you have one cigarette too many.

Or all of that fast food you eat leaves you with obesity, heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Or your children end up with athsma and emphysema from the off-gassing compounds that are used in new home carpets, flooring, etc..

Or you end up with athsma, emphysema or cancer from all of the household chemicals you use when you clean.

It goes on and on. You are far more likely to have your life impacted by any one (or all) of those things before you are attacked by an assailant despite what the evening news tells you.

Rapists don't pay for TV spots, SUV makers do. Murderers don't pay for network ads, household cleaners do. Armed muggers don't pay for magazine ads, cigarette companies do.

You Americans are scarred of all the wrong things.

What we can gather from this is that "flamebait" is not an American, so not understanding the American attitude is understandable. We can also assume that "flamebait" is an environmentalist a Luddite, given its apparent horror of SUV's, fast-food, and chemicals, so don't expect much in the way of logic.

Second, in response to Yup, He's a Thorougly Dangerous Man! it writes:

Let's see... He had a gun and it still didn't stop him from getting robbed. Even after he pulled it out the assailant still went for the cash and got away with it.

Wow, guns really help huh.

Note the last line is formed as a statement, not a question. Yes, "flamebait"'s mind is all made up - guns never help people defend themselves - ever. And if they do, it's an aberration.

Finally, in response to Aren't Sawed-Off Shotguns Illegal? "flamebait" pulls out all the stops. Yes, this one encouraged me to sit down and generate a response before I go to bed. The alleged thought processes behind this one are so illustrative of the gun-control mindset that it merits it. Let's dissect that response nearly line-by-line:

As far as I can tell, the only reason the intended victim isn't dead is pure luck. How would your opinions change if the intended victim was shot as well?

Luck, it is said, is often largely a matter of being prepared. How would my opinions change? Not at all. That was a risk that the intended victim took upon himself. It is his choice as to whether a forcible response was correct - not the State's. He made his choice, and regardless of whether he'd been injured or killed I believe he made the right one.

Or the victims children if they were present? or someone on the street walking by?

He was the man on the scene at the time. The choice was his to make. As a result, one perpetrator won't (apparently) ever perpetrate again, and the other may very well be wounded. I will be the first to say that things might not have gone as well, but resisting crime is never immoral. Not resisting crime encourages more. That is, I believe, why England and Wales has the highest rate of violent crime in the developed world - self-defense there has been made, for all intents and purposes, illegal, and the mindset required has to a large extent apparently been bred out.

Defending self and family is risky.

So is submitting meekly.

But institutionalized submission to it is destructive to society.

The choice belongs and should belong to the individual.

(Yes, we kill each other far more, but we mug, assault, and rob each other far less. But we've always killed each other at a much higher rate than Europeans. It's apparently an American cultural trait. Only after English law made defending oneself legally risky did their violent crime rates begin to climb, and now they're far higher than our own with the singular exception of murder - which is apparently not an English cultural trait, but one they're learning.)

You can bet that the sawed off shotgun that was used was probably stolen from some "law abiding citizen's" home and is now being used in home invasions; or it was until he was shot.

Possibly. And your point? Oh, wait, that comes later...

How many home invasions do you think he successfully pulled off because of the shotgun before his luck ran out?

Um, this appears as though you're suggesting that the shotgun caused other home invasions? Or are you just suggesting that the shotgun ensured that other home invasions were successful? How so? You need to be more clear. The fact is that I don't know how many other home invasions this pair (or the individual with the sawed-off) have attempted, but "home invasions" are far more common in England, per capita, than they are here. Criminals there don't need to fear that they might be met with lethal force.

A sawed-off shotgun isn't a magic talisman, it's merely a weapon - as this incident illustrates.

I reiterate: Not resisting crime tends to encourage more crime. Even you seem to understand that.

You joke about Mr Reid having a laoded(sic) gun next to his bed, "Unsafe Storage" you laugh, are you not far more likely to get killed in the United States by your own gun than you are by an unknown assailant?

Depends on how you twist interpret the statistics. Since the majority of firearm-related death in this country is by suicide, then statistically you're more likely to die "by your own gun" than "by an unknown assailant." I've covered the case of suicide extensively here, if you're interested. (Read the link before flying off the handle, eh?) However, if you're talking death by criminal action, then no.

If "Safe Storage" laws were in effect, the only people they'd affect would be the victims. What "Safe Storage" laws say to the citizen is:

"You're not responsible enough to decide whether keeping a gun available for self-defense is a good idea or not. The All-Powerful, All-Knowing State knows that it's not, so don't do it or you will be criminally prosecuted.

Depend on the State for your defense. You're not qualified.

Problem is, it's not the legal responsibility of the State, and it's not logistically possible anyway. I've got quite a bit to say about that here.

How many American children die due to unsafely stored guns in their homes? Is it still a joke to you?

You miss the point. The death of children is never a joke. It's too many, but I believe it's far fewer than you'd imagine. I cover that topic also in this post.

The number of children who die by accidental gunshot (in a country with possibly 250,000,000 guns, where possibly 40% of households contain at least one gun) is about 160 per year, and that's for "children" up through 18 years of age. Just for comparison, more than that die in bicycle accidents, and almost seven times as many drown. Unsecured guns are apparently not that dangerous, since the gun control groups indicate that twenty percent of gun owning parents surveyed kept a loaded firearm unsecured in the home.

That's a lot of guns.

Now, I have a question: How intrusive must the government become in order to prevent or even significantly affect less than 200 accidental deaths a year?

"Safe Storage" is the joke.

And finally, the kicker:

Don't get me wrong, I don't like crime or criminals anymore than you do. Where our opinions differ is that I believe that all guns should be outlawed.

Of course you do. And from that statement, you also apparently think that, by outlawing them, you'll make them go away.

I recommend that you study the success of that tactic. It doesn't work. In fact, by all the evidence, it doesn't help. Guns are a technology - and not a particularly difficult technology either. You can't stuff that genie back in the bottle. They aren't going to go away no matter how much you wish, meditate, chant, pray, or legislate.

First, you cannot disarm governments - they aren't going to do it. And governments have historically, by far been the largest killers of their own people than criminals have been. So, as long as my government is going to be armed, I think I'll be too. Second, laws that ban things only keep those things out of the hands of law-abiding people. See (again) England, where the only people with handguns these days are A) the criminals and B) the government. Third, because firearms are merely a technology, then eliminating that technology doesn't fix the underlying problem, which is people willing to use violence to get what they want.

There was a time when there were no guns.

The world of that time was run exclusively by large men with swords.

It wasn't a particularly safe, nor free, nor democratic world.

Firearms aren't a panacea, but neither are they a pestilence. They come with a significant cost, but what they have provided is greater personal freedom of the individual - for good and for bad - than at any time in the history of man.

The most governments can do is disarm the good people.

We forget that at our own risk.