I'm still surprised no-one made a Crazy Train reference....

This film's pretty contentious but it was made by the same guy who did Shawshank Redemption, so I was willing to give it a shot. I thought it was pretty good, except for a handful of scenes, and the ending was a kick in the teeth that I loved and found laughable at the same time, mostly due to Narm.

Full review here: http://axelsplayground.squarespace.com/journal/2010/10/18/the-mist.html

John Malkovich is a show-stealer when it comes to playing a loony old man. Humour, silly action scenes, and a surprisingly decent story. Go see Red, it's good.

Full review here: http://axelsplayground.squarespace.com/journal/2010/10/15/red.html

Well you didn't say they had a knife either. You just said 'trying to harm you', which doesn't nescicarily mean lethal force.

Does it matter? Any attempt to harm you is potentially lethal, you have no way of knowing otherwise.

I'd call the police.  

Munchkin answered this nicely; police might not arrive in time. Twelve minutes or more is a looong time when someone has a weapon at your neck...

-Non-lethal weapons-

Tazers do not have an advantage over groups, and, again, non-lethal weapons are great if they're able to do the job, but they are not as capable as firearms. They cannot be properly used to defend your home either.

-SUV analogy-

Your intention is received, even if your analogy is flawed (ever had someone rob you at SUV-point?) and your logic unsound to me. You're placing the blame for the deaths on the SUV when it should be on the people who are driving unsafely. It'd be a safer world if everyone drove a crash-resistant car, and an ever safer one if they all drove them responsibly, than if everyone drove normal cars.

A highly efficient SUV would be better for everyone to have than a regular car, because they're safe in the event of accidents and not just stupidity too.

But we aren't discussing SUVs, really. We're discussing firearms. Saying homicides will involve guns more often in nations where gun ownership is common doesn't indicate that firearms are responsible for the actual homicide rate, nor does it cover the amount of potential crimes that are prevented by people (be they law enforcement or civilians) having weapons available.

-Democracy-

When it's you and me taking up arms, it's a good thing for someone to have stockpiled them to do so, wouldn't you say? As for needing guns to bring about democracy, most nations won things like bills of rights from armed uprisings at some point or another. India and Canada are rare exceptions to the rule.

So, defending against someone with a gun pointing at you is easier than someone who is threating you with a knife?

No, in that case, you're probably screwed, but should the situation arise where you can ready your weapon, you'll have the upper hand. Against someone without a gun, though, you're going to win if you have one.

A gun isn't a perfect defense against crime, nor will I suggest it is, but it means you have a damn better chance than if you don't.

You heard it here first, folks! Anyone that becomes a criminal threat to anyone else deserves to die immediately.

Brandon, your sarcasm is curious. When a man draws a gun on a police officer, is a police officer supposed to calmly try and talk him down or fire until the threat is neutralized?

If your answer is the former, you'll be laughed at by every police officer you talk to.

-Sam's post-

Sam, wouldn't you say that it's better to have some chance to defend against, say, a junkie breaking into your home or organized criminals trying to murder you, than to deliberately leave yourself unarmed?

Sheesh, so much to go through...

Just google "gun homicides" or anything similar and stop being intentionally ignorant. There's less in the UK, that's the point.

Lurk, the overall homicide rate in all forms in the UK is lower than in the US. Naturally, when you have a higher overall rate of homicide, there's going to be a proportionally higher amount of gun-related homicides.

What's telling is that the areas with the highest homicide rates in the United States (lower than the UK) are those with the highest gun control restrictions (most notably the District of Columbia, which has a higher homicide rate than most any country you can care to name) and the ones with the lowest have the weaker gun control systems.

Also, it's harder to get pure stats. The UK excludes attempts from homicide rates, the US does not. Given that the UK has more violent crime than anywhere in the US, I imagine that taints the statistics.

I like the way you don't even consider the fact that you're probably going to kill them. Urban wasteland indeed.

Lurk, why should I give a damn about someone who's trying to harm me ? Their lives effectively forfeit the moment they became a threat. See how caring you are when someone tries to hurt you.

-Manna's post-

Again, we see "I feel safe so you should too". Guns don't fire by accident, they've been designed not to. Plus, if you get threatened with a flick knife or syringe, you're pretty much dead if the person seriously tries to kill you. For proof of this, give a child a marker, tell them to mark you, and try to get it away from them. A gun at least ensures you can fight back.

-Tazers-

Tazers have far more flaws than guns, we've been over this. I'm fine with people carrying them, and the police using them to subdue criminals, they're great tools. However, you should have the option to have a gun.

-Training/licensing-

As I said, fine by me, really.

-Non-lethal alternatives-

The situations in which non-lethal alternatives would be useful would not increase, I'm afraid. A group of attackers could still easily overpower someone wielding them, even without a firearm, in a mugging situation. Meanwhile, in a home invasion situation, pepper spray is assuredly useless except as, at most, a distraction, while with a multi-shot tazer, you better home your attackers are neatly lined up or in range or that there's only three of them and so on.

-Revolution-

Afghanistan had a rather peaceful coup at one point that instituted secular democracy, before the Americans decided to play Cold War chess with the country.

Point is, guns aren't there for when there's democracy; guns are there for when democracy is taken away.

*waits for the day when someone attempts to rob a bank using a swimming pool*

*Waits for the day when someone defends their families with one*

"Since we can't completely stop people from accquiring illegal firearms, we make it easier for criminals to buy guns rather than making it harder for them."

But we don't make it easy for them. I've said before I'm fine with registries, licensing, waiting periods, and background checks (said this in my first post on the topic, in fact). This makes it more difficult for criminals to access firearms, but not by much given the prevalence of illegal markets, and I have not much opposition to these as concepts.

What I'm opposed to is people not being allowed to use a gun to defend themselves.

Y'know, I was going to make an analogy about not needing a yellow fever vaccine but liking the option, but then I remembered my former neighbours stabbed a man to death and sold drugs, and have since been replaced with a succession of prostitutes. I really do live in a terrible neighbourhood, and my college is no more than a ten minute walk from the crime centre of Canada. I really DO live in an urban wasteland.

In short, Sam, your suggestion of "I feel safe in my comfortable community so you shouldn't need a gun" comes off as a little elitist.

As for increasing the availability of guns, what's your point? All it does is increase their availability to law-abiding citizens, not to criminals. Why would a criminal go through the rigmarole of getting a legal gun, getting it registered, getting themselves set up as a known gun owner, and so on, when they can buy one illegally without ever having it tied to their identity in any way? Black markets will always get their product through if the demand is sufficient, Sam, as the "War on Drugs" has taught us.

As for how a gun can help someone defend themselves, let's run through two kinds of defense situations:

Street Assault: A person tries to rob you or attack you in some way. In the case of the former, it's wise to give up your wallet, but if you have a gun, you can draw it the moment their back is turned and bring them to a halt by threat (and by bullet if they try something stupid). If the latter, you may as well draw and fire, and you have better odds of surviving than in a fist fight. A gun brings you out likely far better than the other options.

Home/Business Invasion: Someone attacks your home or place of business. Don't even get me started on the number of home invasions that have ended in tragedy when people can't defend themselves. As for business, it might be more wise to just let them carry out the robbery but, again, if things turn violent, better to be armed than not. Even if they don't, armed workers/customers against a smaller number or lesser-armed group of robbers are likely able to prevent the crime.

More than this, though, guns have another purpose. Another reason I wanted to use the vaccine analogy is for herd immunity. A thought experiment suggested by Penn Jillette was to give every woman in America a pink Desert Eagle and the training to use it. They can then do whatever they want; keep it, throw it away, sell it... But if even half of them kept it, just half, that means any time a robber thinks about breaking into a home, assaulting a woman, or trying to rob a store with a woman in it, there's a 50/50 chance that he could end up with a bullet between his eyes.

The idea that you might have a 50/50 chance of dying from committing a crime is probably pretty potent, wouldn't you say?

Also on the subject of guns as a defensive tool, it may be less relevant on a day to day basis, or in our relatively 'free' western countries, but the right to bear arms against the government should also be considered (it was afterall the reason the right to bear arms was included in the u.s constitution).

I've tried mentioning this in the past, it usually gets scoffed at.