Sometimes they do. Hey, I’m just trying to be fair and balanced. It’s one of those nasty character flaws of liberals like me–the desire to see all sides of a issue even if it doesn’t support their position. The story from WSBTV in College Park, Georgia:
Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’”
…
Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough.” …That’s when one [college] student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.
The student then ran to the room where the second gunman… was holding the women.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window.” … [He was later] found dead near his apartment, only one building away.
…
One female student was shot several times during the crossfire. She is expected to make a full recovery.
Of course, this student is legally barred from carrying that gun within 1000ft of his school under GA law. For some reason I think the home invaders he shot wouldn’t be so law abiding.
The fallacy of gun control people (and I say this as a supporter of gun control) is that it never answers the question: how do you get the gun out of the hands of the criminal. Passing more feel-good laws is not the answer.
The fallacy of gun lovers is the denial that guns kill more people than they save. And also that restricting guns is one way to get more guns out of the hands of more criminals.
Some gun control would make the country a safer place–even if that just means a few fewer crazy people with semi-automatic weapons–for police officers and the public.
What gun control lovers fail to grasp is that laws don’t make you safer. You need observance of laws. And criminals are not partial to observing laws.
If you want to take away all guns, than admit it. But then the civil war begins. Plus there’s the matter of the constitution.
And I’m skeptical about this one too.
Are thieves really in the practice of executing ten people in the course of a robbery?
If I was the college student with the gun that just wounded one of my friends, I might tell this story too. Might have been a little easier on everyone if the partiers gave up their phones and wallets.
Look, ok just sayin’, I want to hear the other side too, but is this really it?
Seems to me that if you choke off the legal supply of weapons, the crooks will have a hard time getting theirs. I think it’s easier to smuggle in dope than guns.
Would they all have been killed? Probably not.
Is there more to the story than we’ve heard. Probably.
Would a woman have been raped and some people beat up? Very likely.
And choking off the legal supply might make it harder for criminals to get guns. But in the meantime there are literally hundreds of millions of guns in the U.S. Think about what that means.
And if I lived in a neighborhood where criminals had guns, I would want one too.
My problem isn’t with gun control in theory. It’s with gun control in practice.
Hi anonymous, the article doesn’t say that the student with the gun wounded one of his friends. It says someone was injured in the crossfire. Unless you have some ballistics lab data or at least another news source, it’s probably better that you not jump to conclusions.
Furthermore, it is not unheard of for witnesses to be executed. Given that the chances of escaping from that situation unharmed are more than zero and less than one and there is no way to reasonably calculate the odds given either contingency, I’ll take my skill with a sidearm (known) and my dumb luck (unknown) over just my dumb luck any day.
Peter, your gun-lover fallacy isn’t provable. While gun deaths are statistical record, lives saved is impossible to calculate. This is just arguing dogma
As far as restricting guns being one solution to getting guns out of criminals hands, this may be true to a point, but at what point do you start seeing the effects of the illicit market? We know that since we started the war on drugs, the potency of illicit drugs has been continuously in the increase. The same principle applies to firearms. Street criminals will use what they can most easily get their hands on, and at what point is it easier for an enterprising criminal to start bringing in old Eastern Bloc weapons of war from overseas than to just use the comparatively watered-down excuses for weapons he can get here?
Marc,
Come on, I too would assume that the girl was shot by the “good guy” and not the robbery/raper.
Why jump to that conclusion? Because the winner writes history. I wonder if there even was crossfire (though I’ll concede there probably was).
I don’t think bad guy #2, Jamal Hill, was even hit with bullets, so it makes me more likely to think the “good” bullets went into the good girl instead of the bad guy.
But you’re right, I don’t know and am just guessing. Still, I’ll be interested to hear what Mr. Hill says at the trial. Not because he’s a good man, but because the cop in me knows that the odds that one side of a criminal situation is telling the complete, total, and honest truth is just about zero.
And it’s a bold (I might even say crazy) position to say that liberal gun laws keeps our guns from being more lethal. Really? I understand your logic, but do you really believe this?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly sympathetic to positions that say prohibition doesn’t work. But nobody, especially with recent Supreme Court decisions, is arguing for total gun prohibition. That would require constitutional change.
It’s about regulating. But gun nuts oppose any attempt to regulate on the grounds that it’s the first step to gun prohibition and confiscation.
And if somebody’s gun position is always based on the idea that any gun law is part of a master plan for jack-booted thugs to confiscate guns, then that person is no help when it comes to rational and life-saving public safety policy (and not to mention wrong).
And kind of related, perhaps gun prohibition isn’t related to drug prohibition. Countries with virtual gun prohibition have fewer guns and lower levels of violence. Near prohibition of guns seems to work much better than drug prohibition. Maybe because guns aren’t drugs. Though perhaps it could be said that guns do make some people high and other Americans are addicted to guns.
"It's one of those nasty character flaws of liberals like me–the desire to see all sides of a issue even if it doesn't support their position."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Hardly! Have you ever listened to Chris Matthews or other such morons? Of course, I think all of the "pundits" on TV red or blue are morons.
Do you see Pelosi having "the desire to see all sides of a issue even if it doesn't support their position."???
HAHAHAHAHAH Man, you made me spit my coffee on my new monitor.
I do think, however, that there's a rule for liberals to have delusions of grandeur…or at least impartiality.
"And if I lived in a neighborhood where criminals had guns, I would want one too."
You mean to say that there are neighborhoods where criminals DON'T have guns???
Peter, id does sound, however, like you might be coming around….or at least down from the Gun Control ivory tower. Good man.
Some Americans ARE addicted to guns. collecting them, shooting them, carrying them. But…you can bet your bottom dollar that those are NOT the people to be worried about…unless the sight of a gun makes you wet your pants.
I don't feel like I'm at risk of being a victim of gun crime here in my neighborhood in New York City.
I like living in a neighborhood where I don't feel any need to carry a gun. It keeps the blood pressure down and probably makes me safer by avoiding situations where I would probably be more confrontational if I still were a cop and/or carried a gun.
And note I said liberals "like me" want to see all sides of an issue. Certainly liberals can be just as closed minded as conservatives. But I do think, on average… or at least in theory, that liberals are more open to hearing all sides of an issue than conservatives.