Good guy with a gun actually shows up

[bilby]

Until the cause is treated, would you rather people defend themselves or be victimized by criminals?

I would rather people didn't treat overly simplistic dichotomies as though they were a rational approach to anything, but right now I would settle for them not being treated as the only rational approach to everything.

 

[Derec]

He had no reasonable justification for firing that shot.

Still, I can see no premeditation here. More like acting in the heat of the moment after just getting robbed.
Also, you must consider that this is Texas, which has more permissive laws about using deadly force against retreating thieves and robbers.
This is the state where a guy who shot a fake escort (who died months later) as she was fleeing with the money she stole was acquitted.
Texas Escort Killer Acquitted of Murder

I've seen murder 1 from such a shot (although I never saw where the case ended up)--fired at a fleeing felon, the ricochet killed someone.

That too seems like an overcharge, unless there are more damning details.
On the other hand, the robber should face felony murder charges.

 

[Derec]

Creating a society that pushes people into a life of crime, and then responding with lethal force, is pure evil in every element. Each instance of a criminal being shot, is a scathing indictment of the failure of your society.

Bullshit. People are responsible (absent major mental illness) for their own actions.

 

[bilby]

Creating a society that pushes people into a life of crime, and then responding with lethal force, is pure evil in every element. Each instance of a criminal being shot, is a scathing indictment of the failure of your society.

Bullshit. People are responsible (absent major mental illness) for their own actions.

Yes. People, including people who think they are using their firearms in 'self defence' are responsible for their own actions.

 

[Derec]

Yes. People, including people who think they are using their firearms in 'self defence' are responsible for their own actions.

Sure. Example:
Minnesota Homeowner Byron Smith Convicted of Premeditated Murder
But that does not mean you are right to malign people who exercise their right to self defense correctly.

 

[Copernicus]

Yes. People, including people who think they are using their firearms in 'self defence' are responsible for their own actions.

Sure. Example:
Minnesota Homeowner Byron Smith Convicted of Premeditated Murder
But that does not mean you are right to malign people who exercise their right to self defense correctly.

Nobody is doing that. The issue here is whether a privately owned gun is more likely to be used for self defense than violence against oneself or others. You can pretty much go to any pro-gun web site and paste anecdotes to support the argument that a "good guy with a gun" saved the day. You can get contrary anecdotes from anti-gun web sites. A war of anecdotes proves nothing. The question is always going to be the relative frequency of good and bad outcomes to gun ownership.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nobody is doing that. The issue here is whether a privately owned gun is more likely to be used for self defense than violence against oneself or others. You can pretty much go to any pro-gun web site and paste anecdotes to support the argument that a "good guy with a gun" saved the day. You can get contrary anecdotes from anti-gun web sites. A war of anecdotes proves nothing. The question is always going to be the relative frequency of good and bad outcomes to gun ownership.

And we simply don't have good stats. The anti-gun side points to the body count, but that doesn't tell anything like the whole story because a defensive use of a gun is much less likely to result in a body than the offensive use or suicidal use. The pro-gun side has a big problem with a lack of reporting (many incidents end with the bad guy hastily departing when he realizes his target is armed--and many of these there's little reason to report to the police) but we do have one piece of data that should be pretty solid: If the gun is fired there's only about a 10% chance there's a body. Thus at a minimum defensive uses are 10x the body count--which puts it well ahead of suicide.

 

[Copernicus]

Nobody is doing that. The issue here is whether a privately owned gun is more likely to be used for self defense than violence against oneself or others. You can pretty much go to any pro-gun web site and paste anecdotes to support the argument that a "good guy with a gun" saved the day. You can get contrary anecdotes from anti-gun web sites. A war of anecdotes proves nothing. The question is always going to be the relative frequency of good and bad outcomes to gun ownership.

And we simply don't have good stats. The anti-gun side points to the body count, but that doesn't tell anything like the whole story because a defensive use of a gun is much less likely to result in a body than the offensive use or suicidal use. The pro-gun side has a big problem with a lack of reporting (many incidents end with the bad guy hastily departing when he realizes his target is armed--and many of these there's little reason to report to the police) but we do have one piece of data that should be pretty solid: If the gun is fired there's only about a 10% chance there's a body. Thus at a minimum defensive uses are 10x the body count--which puts it well ahead of suicide.

I should also have mentioned the problem that the frequency of gun use by bad guys is also an issue, and it has been raised already in this thread. Most guns in the hands of bad guys start out as purchases that are considered legal at the point of sale, and the US produces a huge volume of guns to meet the demand by both good and bad guys. Very often, the use of a gun by a good guy is actually cancelled out by the use of a gun by a bad guy. That is, the good outcome from gun possession was necessary to prevent the bad outcome from gun possession. It is a facile argument that bad guys will always find a way to get their hands on a gun, since that obviously isn't the case in other countries with fewer guns in "good guy" hands.

It is true that we don't have very good statistics, and there are complicated reasons for that. Police blotter statistics can be very skewed from state to state, and the federal government does not do a good job of tracking national use because of the politics surrounding the Second Amendment. You didn't support your claim of "solid data" in your final sentence, so it is impossible to tell whether it is even a meaningful statistic. For starters, guns are fired a lot at non-human targets, so my guess is that your "solid data" may be less solid when the details of how it was gathered is looked at critically. Since most gun play results in injuries rather than dead bodies, I tend to consider the mountain of deaths to be something of a distraction. Many such injuries are life-altering events. As for bad guys running away from guns and going unreflected in the statistics, it is also true that good guys running away from bad guys with guns are unreflected in the statistics. If you are going to speculate about what doesn't get reported, think about both sides of the issue.

 

[bilby]

Fuck me, you're not nine years old, so please knock it off with this pathetic "good guys" and "bad guys" shit.

Reality isn't a fucking saturday matinée Western with everyone wearing the appropriately coloured hats so you can tell who to cheer, and who to boo.

 

[Elixir]

Fuck me, you're not nine years old, so please knock it off with this pathetic "good guys" and "bad guys" shit.

Reality isn't a fucking saturday matinée Western with everyone wearing the appropriately coloured hats so you can tell who to cheer, and who to boo.

Try tellin' that to the bad guys!

 

[prideandfall]

Creating a society that pushes people into a life of crime, and then responding with lethal force, is pure evil in every element. Each instance of a criminal being shot, is a scathing indictment of the failure of your society.

Bullshit. People are responsible (absent major mental illness) for their own actions.

Your failure here is in the presumption that "responsibility" simply equates to "following the rules of a society that benefits a select few at the express detriment of the many" - you think that following the social contract is the end-all-be-all moral position.

I find that highly specious, mostly because it's predicated on one of two ridiculous assumptions:
1. You actually think that *everyone* benefits from civilization the same way you do, and so everyone's choices are based on *your* options.
2. You simply think all of society operates to pleasure you personally, and so anyone and anything that doesn't please you is invalid by default, as a matter of course.

Whichever is the case, "because it's the law" is not a sound moral argument when "the law" is expressly designed to fuck over the very people you're vilifying for not following the law.

For many people, not obeying the law is the responsible choice. Your ilk has been malignantly orchestrating a world in which this is more and more true for the last... well honestly for the last 5000 years or so, but narrowing it down a bit to a modern context for the last 60 years as a calculated position of policy.

Crime is your fault, Derec... you are reaping what you have sowed.

 

[Copernicus]

Fuck me, you're not nine years old, so please knock it off with this pathetic "good guys" and "bad guys" shit.

Reality isn't a fucking saturday matinée Western with everyone wearing the appropriately coloured hats so you can tell who to cheer, and who to boo.

Sorry, bilby, but Americans need expressions that make instant sense to them. We still have good guys and bad guys in America. Australians have a more mature way of expressing behavior in nuanced terms, as illustrated in this video:

 

[Derec]

Your failure here is in the presumption that "responsibility" simply equates to "following the rules of a society that benefits a select few at the express detriment of the many" -

Home owners and renters (as renters can be home invaded too) are the many. Home invaders are the few.
Drivers are the many. Carjackers are the few.
Pedestrians are the many. Muggers are the few.

I do not see how laws against robbing people or stealing people's stuff "benefits the select few at the express detriment of the many".

You have a lot of sympathy for the violent criminals, but little with the normal people going about their day being victimized by them.

you think that following the social contract is the end-all-be-all moral position.

Not necessarily, but it is a start.

I find that highly specious, mostly because it's predicated on one of two ridiculous assumptions:
1. You actually think that *everyone* benefits from civilization the same way you do, and so everyone's choices are based on *your* options.

Most people benefit from living in a civilized society. I bet you do too. Somebody stronger could take all your stuff. Or worse.

2. You simply think all of society operates to pleasure you personally, and so anyone and anything that doesn't please you is invalid by default, as a matter of course.

Huh? That does not even make sense. There are plenty of things that are wrong with our society. No society is perfect. But (almost) every society is better than not having a society at all. And certainly, laws against robbing people is not what is wrong with society, no matter how badly you think poor robbers, carjackers, home invaders and muggers are treated by the evil society.

Whichever is the case, "because it's the law" is not a sound moral argument when "the law" is expressly designed to fuck over the very people you're vilifying for not following the law.

Laws can be bad. Laws criminalizing drug use or abortion or consensual adult sex work are cases in point.
However, laws against robbing people are not bad. They are essential.

For many people, not obeying the law is the responsible choice.

What law? Against robbing people?
No, those are some of the least controversial laws. You do not have the right to take my stuff. And if you try to take it from me by force, I may use force to prevent you from taking it. Robbing people makes you a bad guy, not somebody "fucked over" by the evil society.
Give me a fucking break!

Crime is your fault, Derec... you are reaping what you have sowed.

Bullshit.

 

[Derec]

Fuck me,

Not for love nor money!

you're not nine years old, so please knock it off with this pathetic "good guys" and "bad guys" shit.
Reality isn't a fucking saturday matinée Western with everyone wearing the appropriately coloured hats so you can tell who to cheer, and who to boo.

That is a strawman. Nobody is saying reality is like an old western.
That said, in many cases there is clear bad guy.
If somebody decides to break into somebody's house, they are the bad guy. If somebody decides to jack a car at a QT and shoots the owner for resisting, he is the bad guy and should go to prison for life.
Sometimes, you don't even need color-coded hats.

 

[bilby]

That is a strawman. Nobody is saying reality is like an old western.

Loren Pechtel is saying EXACTLY that, every time he refers to "good guys" and "bad guys".

You are too.

That you are blindly ignorant of this to the point that you don't recognise it even after I explicitly pointed it out is truly sad.

 

[Derec]

Loren Pechtel is saying EXACTLY that, every time he refers to "good guys" and "bad guys".

Those are shorthand descriptors, and are not metaphysical, but rather referring to the situation at hand.

 

[bilby]

Loren Pechtel is saying EXACTLY that, every time he refers to "good guys" and "bad guys".

Those are shorthand descriptors, and are not metaphysical, but rather referring to the situation at hand.

They are infantile oversimplifications, and lead to very poor thinking patterns.

 

[Copernicus]

Loren Pechtel is saying EXACTLY that, every time he refers to "good guys" and "bad guys".

Those are shorthand descriptors, and are not metaphysical, but rather referring to the situation at hand.

They are infantile oversimplifications, and lead to very poor thinking patterns.

You are right, of course. Thinking that people can be lumped into just "good" and "bad" categories is an infantile oversimplification, but it is a type of oversimplified thinking that perhaps the majority of adults subscribe to pretty much all over the world. The problem in America isn't that we have a different culture or more people with mental health issues. It is that we have more people with mental health issues who have relatively easy access to guns. IOW, guns really are the problem. Arm any population of human beings on the planet with as many guns as Americans have access to, and you will have roughly the same homicide and suicide rates, because guns make homicide and suicide that much easier to commit.

Because doing away with the anachronistic Second Amendment in the US Constitution is an almost insurmountable political obstacle at present, there isn't any clear solution to bringing down the high level of lethal violence. Pumping even more guns into the civilian population, a "solution" that Republican-dominated legislatures are pursuing avidly in a great many states, is just going to aggravate the situation, but the "good guy" versus "bad guy" mentality is part of what fuels that strategy. A great many people actually believe that more guns in "good guy" hands will serve to deter and bring down the level of violence, crazy as that seems to everyone else. The majority of the US population wants tougher gun control legislation according to opinion surveys, but progress is bogged down by a political system that favors more rural and conservative representatives in legislatures.

Because mental health is an issue in the mix of gun-related violence, states are increasingly turning to "red flag" laws designed to remove guns from the hands of individuals who can be profiled as likely to commit violence. These laws are extremely complicated, because the majority of shooters with mental health issues do not actually have diagnosable mental illnesses like schizophrenia, and only a minority of those that fit the profile will actually end up committing violence. And the current trigger-happy Supreme Court may shoot down any laws that have a chance of being effective.

A Duke University social psychologist who specializes in gun violence explains what the difficulties are with treating gun violence as related to mental illness in the following CNN report. (The report only interviews one expert, and the expert doesn't just talk about mass shooters, despite the title.)

Experts question link between mental illness, mass shootings​

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Fuck me, you're not nine years old, so please knock it off with this pathetic "good guys" and "bad guys" shit.

Reality isn't a fucking saturday matinée Western with everyone wearing the appropriately coloured hats so you can tell who to cheer, and who to boo.

We are using "good guy" and "bad guy" to describe the defender and aggressor respectively. While they might not always be easy to identify the roles generally exist. (Occasionally you'll have situations with only bad guys.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A Duke University social psychologist who specializes in gun violence explains what the difficulties are with treating gun violence as related to mental illness in the following CNN report. (The report only interviews one expert, and the expert doesn't just talk about mass shooters, despite the title.)

Experts question link between mental illness, mass shootings​

Because most mass shootings do not appear to be due to mental illness. Rather, they are suicides.