[rickc]

Public_Domain Public_Domain:

This skit is making the rounds...

Jim Jeffreries is an idiot. Guns ARE protection, plain and simple. Do you really think that a 70 plus man could have defended himself against multiple armed intruders without a gun? How about this kid who defended his siblings against multiple armed intruders? http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/29455296 ... vegas-home
Or this home owner who had armed intruders breaking into his home? http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-v ... -less-year
I could go on and on. It seems like every other day there is a news story about a home owner using a gun to defend their home and family. You don't hear about it. The national news does not cover the story, but the local media does. Jim Jefferies can cower like a little bitch in his shitty Manchester flat while crackheads relieve him of his personal belongings if he so chooses too. In my neighborhood intruders find themselves on the wrong end of a gun, and many end up with a fatal dose of lead poisoning.

[andyt]

As usual the discussion veers from mass shootings to home protection. You want to have a gun at home, feel free. It's still a fact that way more people or their family are harmed by their own guns than are protected by them. But to advocate for people fired at will on the street is just terrifying. And of course in Canada people would never get found not guilty for shooting a halloween guy ringing their doorbell. Thank God.

[rickc]

andyt andyt:

As usual the discussion veers from mass shootings to home protection. You want to have a gun at home, feel free. It's still a fact that way more people or their family are harmed by their own guns than are protected by them. But to advocate for people fired at will on the street is just terrifying. And of course in Canada people would never get found not guilty for shooting a halloween guy ringing their doorbell. Thank God.

Yes you are right that the discussion has veered, but I was not the one veering. I was responding to a post about guns not being protection. As far as mass shootings go ,most of them are in "gun free zones". Now my esteemed colleague Delwin will probabaly disagree with me on the gun free zones ( and thats his right and I respect that right) but I feel that the vast majority of these mass shootings are occoring in areas where legal gun owners do not have a legal right to possess a firearm like schools, colleges, federal facilities, etc. etc. Yes we have had some movie theater shootings. Im guessing they feel the darkness and noise helps conceal their intent somewhat. The church shooting.........I used to attend church on a regular basis. I can honestly say that I never had my gaurd up at a church service. Never. I always assumed I was around people better than me. I always felt like the biggest screw up in the crowd was me. I would never expect anyone in my service to open fire, and I would never dream about bringing a firearm into a church. It may not "legally" be a gun free zone, but I can say that cannot think of another place on earth where my gaurd would be more down than a church service.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Unless you need our guns or our troops. Then be sure to bitch because we didn't show up fast enough.

Nice try, but there is nothing in the title nor article about the US military - it specifically asks,

DO CIVILIANS WITH GUNS EVER STOP MASS SHOOTINGS

[BartSimpson]

bootlegga bootlegga:

DO CIVILIANS WITH GUNS EVER STOP MASS SHOOTINGS

Then the answer is a categorical YES.

From the pages of the NRA National Rifleman magazine:

$1:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the dark days following the British Expeditionary Force's evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940, Great Britain was a nation virtually disarmed. And not just by the need to abandon equipment on France's beaches to save British "Tommies" to fight another day, but by the policies of its own government. The days of devotion to civilian markmanship, "volunteer rifle clubs" and the idea that there should be "a rifle in every cottage," as proposed by the Prime Minister Marquis of Salisbury in 1900, had given way to restrictive gun control laws that required subjects to demonstrate "good reason" to merely obtain a handgun or rifle. So with Hitler's legions poised to cross the English Channel, the British people were defended by an ill-equipped and defeated army and a "Home Guard" armed with little more than sporting shotguns and pikes.

Help for the beleaguered nation came from both the American government and from the American people, the latter through the "American Committee for Defense of British Homes." In late 1940, the committee sent an urgent appeal -- which, of course, appeared in American Rifleman -- for Americans to send "Pistols - Rifles - Revolvers - Shotguns - Binoculars" because "British civilians, faced with the threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defense of their homes." Thousands of arms were collected and sent to England, one of which was a .30-'06 Model 1903 target rifle owned by Major John W. Hession. Hession was one of the pre-eminent highpower rifle target shooters of his day, and he used that rifle to win Olympic gold at Bisley Camp in England in 1908. The rifle, unlike the majority sent, was returned and can now be viewed int he national Firearms Museum.

The U.S. Government responded to Britain's peril as well with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. Almost immediately, quantities of "U.S. Rifle, Cal. .30, M1" were on their way across the Atlantic, and those guns are the subject of an article by noted M1 Garand historian Scott Duff starting on p. 42. The "British Garands" have an interesting history but the importance of arming the British at that time is made clear by the fact that the rapidly growing U.S. Army itself did not have sufficient numbers of the then-new M1 Garands. Winston Churchill wrote in Their Finest Hour: "When the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms, special trains were waiting in all ports to receive their cargoes. The Home Guard in every county, in every village, sat up through the night to receive them. ... By the end of July we were an armed nation ... ."

Now, sadly, Britain is again a disarmed nation, where even Olympic athletes wanting to represent their country cannot own a handgun and where an act of self-defense can land a subject in jail. As with virtually all rifles and handguns, those likely few remaining guns sent to England in its time of desperate need have been confiscated and destroyed. Despite the very near enslavement of England being so close a mere six decades ago, the lesson of the false promises of gun control and personal disarmament were not learned.

Sincerely, ... Mark A Keefe, IV -- Editor

[Delwin]

No, the question is not whether an armed militia can stopped a foreign invasion. It's about psychotic gun nuts going crazy and killing civilians.

[Thanos]

Good article here where combat veterans and tactical weapons trainers call out the "good guy with a gun" nonsense for the ridiculous fantasy it is.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/10/its-ins ... with-guns/

$1:

Stephen Benson first learned during Navy SEAL training that carrying a gun would be more likely to expose him to gun violence.

That lesson directly contradicts the message promoted by the National Rifle Association and increasingly cited by gun owners as their motivation for buying a firearm, reported The Nation.

“It’s insane,” Benson said, recalling how his military training exposed the lie behind the most persistent pro-gun argument.

“We put on our issue .45s, and our instructor said, ‘Gentlemen, the first and most important thing you’ve done by putting on that weapon is you’ve increased your chances of being in a gunfight by 100 percent,’” he said. “That’s a lesson that a lot of people don’t get. More guns means more gunfights — and the idea that in a chaotic, pressurized, terrifying situation, they’re going to do the right thing is ridiculous.”

Benson and other combat veterans spoke to The Nation’s Joshua Holland in hopes of confronting the “lies” peddled by the NRA and their corporate masters.

“I think there’s this fantasy world of gunplay in the movies, but it doesn’t really happen that way,” said retired Army Sgt. Rafael Noboa y Rivera. “When I heard gunfire [in Iraq], I didn’t immediately pick up my rifle and react. I first tried to ascertain where the shooting was coming from, where I was in relation to the gunfire and how far away it was. I think most untrained people are either going to freeze up, or just whip out their gun and start firing in that circumstance.”

The NRA’s chief spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, infamously claimed following the Sandy Hook child massacre that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” — but Rivera and other combat vets say that’s ridiculous.

“I think they would absolutely panic,” Rivera told The Nation. [Editor’s note: Rivera served as Raw Story’s associate publisher in 2013.]

The essential lie embedded in LaPierre’s claim — which many gun owners have swallowed whole — is that intentions make any difference whatsoever in a gun battle.

“In chaotic situations, the first thing you know is that the sh*t has hit the fan and you don’t know where the fan is,” said Benson, who served three combat tours in Vietnam later trained elite troops.

“Unless it’s constantly drilled into you, it’s very hard to maintain discipline in those situations,” he told The Nation. “You’re immediately hit with a massive thump of adrenaline. Your mouth begins to taste like copper. You can hear the blood moving in your system. You can even experience a kind of time-warp — and the problem with that kind of state is that conscious thought shuts down because you’ve been taken over by your nervous system, and your nervous system is saying, ‘Holy sh*t, things just got really bad.’”

--------------

Those concerns stopped combat veteran John Parker, who holds a concealed carry permit, from using his weapon to confront a gunman who killed nine people last week at an Oregon community college.


“We could have opened ourselves up to be potential targets ourselves, and not knowing where SWAT was, their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were, and if we had our guns ready to shoot, they could think that we were bad guys,” said Parker, who took shelter with other students in a classroom.

[BartSimpson]

Delwin Delwin:

No, the question is not whether an armed militia can stopped a foreign invasion.

I answered your question.

Given that the Nazis committed mass shootings in every country they ruled the fact that the mass of armed British citizenry helped deter a Nazi invasion means those armed civilians stopped a mass shooting.

And a 'militia' is composed of civilians.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Good article here where combat veterans and tactical weapons trainers call out the "good guy with a gun" nonsense for the ridiculous fantasy it is.

So the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a bad cop with a gun?

[Thanos]

Recognizing that most people, including cops and trained soldiers, engage in panic fire when they come under fire themselves would be useful, if for nothing else than to put the end to this bullshit that LaPierre's been spreading about these alleged 'good guys' he thinks are everywhere waiting to leap into action like in some retarded Stallone film.

[Delwin]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Delwin Delwin:

No, the question is not whether an armed militia can stopped a foreign invasion.

I answered your question.

Given that the Nazis committed mass shootings in every country they ruled the fact that the mass of armed British citizenry helped deter a Nazi invasion means those armed civilians stopped a mass shooting.

And a 'militia' is composed of civilians.

No, even given your ridiculous 75 year old scenario you have not proven that an invasion was imminent. You just don't really understand the proof thing, or the evidence thing, or even the clue thing for that matter.

[Thanos]

The Nazis had no serious intention of invading Britain anyway. They didn't have any serious enough naval transport capability to pull it off and would have gotten destroyed on the water by the Royal Navy. Regardless I doubt that they were scared in the slightest by Dad's Army considering that they never backed down or ran away from partisans in any of the occupied countries.

[BartSimpson]

Delwin Delwin:

No, even given your ridiculous 75 year old scenario you have not proven that an invasion was imminent. You just don't really understand the proof thing, or the evidence thing, or even the clue thing for that matter.

Ridiculous? You're really saying this as several hundred thousand unarmed civilians are fleeing from Islamic tyranny? Fuck, you're dense.

In any case there's also the Austin Tower shooter who was first prevented from killing more people by an overwhelming amount of cover fire from civilians. And then he was finally killed by a LEO in conjunction with an armed civilian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

$1:

(Officer) Martinez later credited the numerous civilian shooters for saving "many lives" by forcing Whitman to take cover, limiting his range of targets.[76]

In the period of the late 1960's to just earlier this decade the antipathy of most law enforcement and liberal whackadoodles against armed civilians both enabled mass shooters and deterred armed citizens from stopping mass shooters.

Luby's diner stands out as one of the first mass shootings to take place in a designated 'gun free' zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_shooting

In the aftermath of that shooting the anti-gun Governor Ann Richards was ousted from office and there has not been a Democrat governor of Texas since. George W. Bush came into office on a pro-gun platform and signed several measures into law that restored the gun rights that Texans enjoyed prior to the 1970's.

Luby's was a seminal event because it was a mass shooting where lawfully armed citizens were prevented by law from stopping a mass killer. The only mass shootings that have taken place in Texas since then have been in gun free zones mandated by Federal law. Texas' legislature has already made it legal for the National Guard to be armed on their bases regardless of Obama's orders to the contrary and they are also likely to pass a law that will make soldiers on Federal bases immune from State law if they carry weapons on base in violation of Federal law.

[Delwin]

Ok so your answer is no, the armed civilians did not stop the mass shooting. Got it.

[BartSimpson]

Delwin Delwin:

I'm going to double down on the dumfuck as is my usual practice.