The idiocy of the self defense argument

[penguin7]

First of all, being that I do not own a gun, my best self defense is to work to outlaw guns.

Now if someone breaks into your house you will not know whether he has a gun or not, pretty unlikely anyway if they know you are at home. So if you shoot and kill this guy you are pretty much a murderer. How many times does the drunk come home to the wrong house to get his brains blown out? It is very common for people to try to enter the wrong house for a whole myriad of reasons.

Also the guy is coming in and you are then going to go for your safe where you have locked up the guns. Doesn't it make more sense to call the police? Isn't this much faster?

One thing about guns, if you and the attacker have guns, you have to shoot well before the facts are in. And if your attacker has a gun, the dead guy is the unlucky one not the bad guy. In the best of worlds this self defense crap works half the time, the other half you are dead.
And the odds of someone coming at you with a gun when you have gun at the ready are pretty low, especially when your guns are locked up in the safe.

A far better defense would be to outlaw guns to greatly lower the chances of a gun coming in the house.

On Edit: It is established that those that have guns in their houses are much more likely to blow out the brains of someone they know than a stranger.

[stray cat]

1. I know single women who live alone in the country

who are proficient with a gun and living alone they don't have it locked up and out of reach. If someone breaks in with an intent to harm them - the police will never get there in time and a phone call may not even be possible. I tend to keep pepper spray nearby...

[baldguy]

2. Keeping an unsecured firearm in a house with children is irresponsible.

But, for it to be useful in any threatening situation it must be unsecured & ready to be used.

Opponents of gun control & current laws encourage irresponsible behavior by gun owners.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Oh please. If you don't like guns, don't buy one

The probability that you are going to eliminate all of the billions of guns currently in existence is absurd and even if you did, people would just use machetes like in Dar fur or Zimbabwe.

Guns are here, guns will always be here and some of them will be at my house whether you ban them or not.

Calling the police is useless in the best of times. IF you are lucky enough to get through to 911, you will still have to wait for 1/2 hour for the cops to show up. An awful lot can happen in a few seconds. By the time the cops show up, all you are doing, assuming you and your family are still alive, is giving a statement as to what happened after the fact. In the worst of times, Katrina, major earthquake, etc. you can forget about it! Our great and glorious government had already told you to go fuck yourself. You are on your own.

Thanks, but I will be on my own with my Remington 870 and I feel much safer for that fact.

[ileus]

4. Better safe than sorry.

I've never known of a drunk breaking into a house by mistake.

37 years on this earth shooting in one form or another since i was 6 and no weapon of mine has ever harmed anything that I didn't intend it to.

0 injuries to myself, family, pets........

I just picked up a el-cheap-o double barrel a few weeks ago. Brought it home and performed major surgery on the barrels to make it a better (and still legal 18") home defense weapon. ( I couldn't afford a good purpose built semi-auto ) The wife can't shoot my 9mm for crap, so why not give her the best weapon for self defense? I picked up some 00 buck to keep handy, and some 7 1/2's for her to learn on.

Will she shoot me with it? eh...maybe, but I hope not, no one else has the garage door opener or keys to the house. The shells for it are stored in the same quick safe my pistol is stored in. All my other firearms and ammo are stored in my 28 gun safe.

I don't suppose you've ever heard about not getting 9/11 on the first attempt? I must also assume you have a personal police officer on call, with the requirement of arriving at your home within 45seconds.

[-..__...]

5. No... what's idotic...

is someone who dislikes guns and has no use for them trying to explain why firearms are a poor choice for home defense.

Ohhh... and IBTGAD posters show up.

(In Before The Get A Dog)

[spoony]

6. To my knowledge, no one has accidentally come into my locked house

drunk or not. And what's truly idiotic is thinking that the police response time is faster than the few seconds it takes to retrieve a gun, or that outlawing guns would somehow make them all disappear.