Quote:
Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds
So his life is worth protecting with firearms because he's rich and because of public policy he enacted, but the regular Joes life isn't worth that kind of protection?
I thought the general consensus was that firearms make for poor defence?
Pure elitism.
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Fire arms make for a poor defense among the uninitiated or improperly trained.
I'm sure that these armed body guards have either served in a military or police function where they've not only been trained in fire arm use and safety but in situational use. And they've had years of training, not a weekend training at a dude ranch where they plink garbage cans on full auto.
They've also had to probably go through a battery of psychological and stress training and taken private security courses and gotten lots of refreshers.
Let me put it this way. For the average Joe who buys a weapon for home defense it changes the mindset. You put a gun in somebodies hands in an uncertain situation and chances are they are going to go towards trouble and not away from it. "Don't worry honey, I'll go check out that noise in the basement", instead of the mindset being, there's a noise in the basement, lets get out of the house and let the trained police investigate.
Putting a gun into the hands of a partially trained or quickly trained or not even trained person is bad, especially in a situation that has unknown variables, like fear, adrenaline, enclosed sight lines and a hero complex.
I think that guns are the worst thing for self defense because it overwhelms the discretionary aspect of self defense, which is to clear the area with threats instead of confronting threats.
I think the idea of arming teachers (NRA) and putting improperly trained armed people into what are essentially combat situations is an incredibly poor idea.
I think the right to carry fire arms is a poor idea (The Colorado theatre shootings probably would have been worse if a bunch of idiots would have pulled their guns and started blazing away with zero to poor training.
The old saying is that guns don't kill people, people kill people is true, especially with people with the best intentions.
If you want proper gun control in the absence of changing the second amendment you do a requirements shift. If you want to buy a gun for self defense you have to take stringent mental health and stress testing with a 100% pass requirement. You have to take a 6 month course that covers not only gun awareness and safety but situational training and at the end of it you have to look a dog in the face and shoot it to show you what happens when you make a bad decision (kind of kidding on the last one). and every year you have to go through the same testing and refreshers.
If you want a carry permit then the training and testing is even tougher.
and you have to buy insurance to cover death and injury caused by your fire arm. That also covers if your gun is stolen and used which would also cost wise disqualify you from replacing the gun.
It would also be nice if you had to submit a ammunition usage report before you could buy new bullets.