My guns stay locked in cases, unloaded(magazines are in the same case)
I have a set of keys that are hidden.
If I do need to retrieve one of my weapons, I simply have a quick snap on holster. I never leave any of my guns laying around, and to make matters worse... Leaving them around loaded.
He is the one that is not safe.
EDIT.
The girl still could have picked up the firearm and discharged it, even if she never even saw that WII controller before.
It isn't designed to guard against crime or corruption. It's designed so that the people have a power. That power being... 'don't **** with us'. Of course people think of smarter ways to **** people over. I can't understand why the Americans allowed the fed to happen for example.
Americans are much closer to their historical routes than we are. Would I advocate guns here? Non freakin' way! Without the historical respect as to why you have the right to bare arms it would be chaos... and that's one thing we don't have in the UK - historical respect and knowledge!
Straw poll: Out of all the gun-obsessed Americans in here, who are just DYING for that day when someone breaks into their house so they can FINALLY point their ****ing gun at someone; how many of you have actually had to defend your property with a gun?
And if any of you have been in that situation: Have you not considered moving your family to a neighbourhood that isn't overrun with burglars?
Good luck with your hunting rifle against the government's helicopter gunships.
Who ever said that we are gun obsessed? We just express our rights as Americans. You can't tell anybody that they wouldn't use a firearm to defend their family from intruders, that's complete bullshit. And living in a bad neighborhood has nothing to do with it, it could happen anywhere. I happen to live in a good neighborhood, and our neighbors truck got broken into. It happens everywhere.
And at least some of those gunship pilots would side against the government, if a government goes too far, even the military wouldn't follow them.
If it wasn't a gun... It'd be a knife, sword... Some other instrument used for killing.
People blame guns so much. People kill people, guns are just what people prefer to kill others with.
Now you're supposed to keep a firearm out of a childs reach. And they also sell guns with locks(or you can buy one), that completely renders the firearm useless without the key to it.
Now could the child still find the key and load the weapon and kill themselves or even break the lock?
Well buddy, where the hell are you at while your child is doing all of this? a 3 year requires supervision most of the time. Leaving any object that could be of danger to the child. That the child could come curious about and began to touch, other than look.
The parents fault completely. No need to have a loaded gun in the house, much less laying on a table near a child. Guns are fine when kept safely locked and unloaded. This is just horrible parenting.
I wasn't telling anybody anything, I was asking a question.
And your answer was "Not me". OK. Next...
Most military employees are right-wing. We've seen this in the UK too, when the BNP membership list got leaked last year and there was a disproportionately high number of soldiers (both serving and retired) and policemen on there.
If your government decided to be more authoritarian, do you think the military - who are employees specifically trained to obey orders without thinking and indeed to kill on command, and are typically extremely right-wing - would decide to side with the general populace?
When the orders are extreme, one would most likely question that order. And seeing as our government is currently left-wing controlled, yes I think they would.
well, maybe in Scotland or Ireland, but certainly not England.
Though I think you will find you are close to your roots... all these British people are trying to tell me how to live my life, sound familiar?
missing the point completely... it's not to stop crime, or corruption. It's not meant as a law force at all. Intrepid was pretty much right on when he said:"It's designed so that the people have a power. That power being... 'don't **** with us'." That may be a bit more blunt than I would have put it, but it is essentially correct.
Opression, not enough to make the people rise up against the state with guns...if you don't count the Native Americans, they did. Yes, they were wiped out, but they did give the US troops a lot of trouble. I can only think of one other case where people maybe should have defended themselves in such a manner, but they didn't. (Japanese Americans during WW2) What I'm talking out is only reserved for extreme cases.
I lived in a very nice neighborhood before I moved away to college... I never had a problem, but my next-door neighbor's house was broken into one night when they were there. They don't have a gun, but luckily the person was unarmed and scared off. There have been other robberies in the neighborhood too. My mom and sisters have been forced to lie down in Centennial Park in Atlanta because some psycho was waving a gun around. Also at my college, my friends' house WAS robbed at gun-point, again he didn't have a gun. He does now. My college is in the middle of a major city, there are certainly enough poor, desperate people around, willing to do anything to better themselves.
I also should point out that I am not what you would call a gun activist. Never owned a gun, and I'm for stronger regulation of guns...but against guns totally? no way, never gonna happen. it should be harder to get them maybe, but I wish someone in that park had had a concealed weapon and just shot the bastard. Like it or not, we can't get rid of guns all the way, because there are already so many...the bad guys will always have guns, so the good guys should too.
The commander-in-chief is left wing at the moment
they wouldn't follow, they can't even agree on simple matters, let alone killing American citizens.
But yes, even if the leadership was right-wing, there would be some soldiers who wouldn't follow.
and to come full circle, it is precisely because many soldiers WOULD follow orders that we have the right to have guns.
Sorry but I find it really strange that American conservatives are so scared of Obama. You've just come out of 8 years where you got skyscrapers mysteriously knocked down by passenger jets, declared war on two innocent parties as a result and had the government giving tax breaks to all their buddies and fishing for oil contracts to tide them all over. Then suddenly one year of a guy who's got no obvious self interest in running the world, he tries to implement a bit of welfare reform and you're all panicking that there's some communist conspiracy about to rear its ugly head and thinking about marching on Washington.
****ing hilarious.
I appreciate that. But it's an outdated mandate and it would be 100% ineffective against your current government. They would turn you into burgers at the drop of a hat and everybody knows it except the NRA.
Another neighbour tale, another "No". So far nobody here with the crime-related gun ownership rationale has found a use for their gun yet.
Where the hell did conservatives come into this conversation? We are stating that the military would not back the government if they start becoming too intrusive. Seems like you just keep trying to take swings at America because we are lenient on our right to bear arms.
The other dude pointed out that you have a less-conservative government at the moment (still very conservative by global standards) and suggested the right-wing military might not fully support it. Read. Reading aids comprehension.
I've lived in the USA and I like Americans, generally-speaking. But your right to bear arms is laughable bullshit based on a no-longer-useful historical mandate from before the age of flight, it provides you with no benefit at all but results in occasional (avoidable) outrageous atrocities that make the rest of the developed world roll their eyes at you.
Actually, it might also be that your religion is responsible for the many large-scale deaths of innocents your country seems to suffer. There aren't any other developed nations with even remotely similar per-capita deaths from random nutjob shootings that the USA achieves. So either it's your outdated gun laws or your outdated religious beliefs. Either way you're all looking kinda third-world to the rest of us.
America might have legal guns, but they aren't exactly rare anywhere else so it's hard to be high an mighty about it.
American culture certainly has a reputation for violence and utter mass stupidity, but we overlooking some over things, for example with all those guns about American also tend to be quite polite: when is the last time an American didn't wish you a nice day, huh?
At the end of the day, each person is an individual, and not every American is a gun toting racist Southern Hick (!).
I for one applauded Tony Martin at the time and still do now. He IMO did the right thing. If somebody breaks in your house are you meant to offer them tea and a chat while they steal your stuff or worse?
The British law is flawed. Criminals have easy access to guns/knives and use them, but oh no!!!!! We can't let the homeowners defend themselves! AND WE'LL PUNISH THEM IF THEY DO!
Methinks it'd change if a politician got robbed or worse. You'd see them doing a BS 'amnesty'. Do you ACTUALLY think they work? No
And on the whole having guns in room point. I have a (deactivated) WWII Enfield .308 rifle in my room. Sound fair enough? It's deactivated according to the letter of the law. Yet it has a bayonet on it. Which was legal when the gun was purchased from a collector (1999) and I've not been told to take it off. Running joke is it's used to prepare meat. Plus I could easily convert it to working (Getting the ammo'd be hard). I'm looking into purchasing a non-working 9mm handgun also, but do you see collectors getting the gun nut/terrorist connotations?
/foilhat
See, that's double standards, a gun's not allowed but a bayonet is?
Huh.. Waving a gun to scare off a burglar, fair enough. Shooting at a Burglar who is attacking you, fair enough. Shooting a Burglar in the back who is climbing out of a window to escape from you is a different thing entirely. Regardless of the legitimacy of the person he shot, Tony Martin is still a murderer.
British and European culture has a tendancy for mass violence and utter stupidity. We have a very very very very violent history. More so than the Americans.
Thisnameistaken - The true conservatives were just as horrified at the Republican regime as they are with the Democratic one. It was the republicans who voted to bail out the banks... which is wholly un-american. unfortunately Ron Paul isn't the most charismatic chap.
I disagree with you Crashgate. He shot somebody who was threatening his property and had a record.
Shooting in self-defence, I agree with. Shooting in self-defence with the result being a burglar dying? I for one would pull the trigger every time if it was to defend my property or family.
EDIT: What would you have done in his situation? I know what I'd do
Errmm... that's odd. You've just seem massive legal and financial power move from the UK to the EU without even a hint of democratic backing and you say America look third world?
I am looking at our countries finances and economic policy and it's looking distinctly third world! massive debt and the printing press is on a full blast. Greece isn't looking to hot right now either. It's the same with Italy and Spain. All in massive massive trouble.
Need I point out the obvious response here? If you're in the military you're trained to follow orders and not question them. Look through history for examples of this.
@Int: Eurozone's ****ed over, I still don't agree with the UK being in the EU
We're always hearing stories about gun accidents, about people killing other people over nothing, all taking place in seemingly peaceful parts of America. It's ironic that by acquiring the means with which to "protect" yourself/your family, you seem to be placing yourself in this high-risk category, simply because you have firearms in your home.
I think Kev's right. I'd wager the number of gun related accidents, and incidents, far outweigh the number of times a gun was necessary as a form of personal defense.
But there's such a gun-culture there (much more so than it ever was in the UK) that it would never happen, they'd never ban them. Most would not give them up ("from my cold, dead, hands!") and of course there would be an incident shortly after the ban, where a family who had handed in their guns were killed. No one would want to be held responsible for that.
He wasn't defending his property or family though, because at that point they were very obviously retreating. Unless he was being directly and aggessively threatened then he should not have pulled the trigger. 'B'cause im were on moi laaaaaand' is not an excuse for killing someone, regardless of their intentions.
As soon as you allow someone to kill for anything other than to avoid the same fate happening to them, you then have an arbitrary and badly defined line dividing 'ok to kill someone' and 'not ok'. Where do you put the line? A burglar in your house? Someone you think might be a burglar? Someone you think might be a burglar near your house? Someone you just don't like the look of? And why specifically draw the line there?
