Topic: My wife is a hero: mom shoots intruder 5 times, saves kids - page 3. (Read 9480 times)

Meaningless tripe that drives out reading skills?!?! I've gone to public school my entire life (up until this year when I went to a private high school) and my head is definitely NOT full with "meaningless tripe that drives out reasoning skills." In fact, public schools often have better teachers than charter schools because charters can pay teachers less than public schools. I have no idea where people get this weird stigma against public schools, but it's utter bullshit and doesn't make any sense.

In the wrong? I guess statements like that are the reasons why a lot of people say that they don't like Americans.

Most people in Europe with a differentiated opinion don't judge the way you think about guns, they just find it suspect.

What if there was a uniformed policeman who was in the room with the mother and children, and had fired the five shots at the same man under exactly the same conditions.  Would your culture have considered that man a hero for doing his job, and for being in the right place at the right time?  If not, why not?  If so, then why not the mother under the same conditions?  Really, I'd like to know.

Ever considered the possibility that it's your cultural upbringing that's in the wrong?  Because I certainly have, and concluded otherwise. 

+10000

Horseshit. I can put 10 on target in less than 2 seconds with ANY decent autoloading pistol. If you do not shoot, and are unaware of the capabilities of guns, you should educate yourself before making blanket statements.

Hell, you can put 12 .32 caliber balls in the head and neck with ONE shot, if you're using .00 buckshot in a 12 gauge at less than ten feet.

Also, you should bear in mind that small cal bullets do not necessarily STOP an assailant right away. Forget tv. In reality, the physics of the situation make it impossible to blow an assailant seriously backwards without doing the same to YOU.

I've been shot in the leg with a .25. Went clean through my calf muscle. Didn't even slow me down as I was running the fuck away. Didn't even hurt till the adrenaline wore off. Guns are not magic. They are constrained by physics. A follow on shot, or multiple follow on shots, could be very easily justified if the assailant don't STOP. A .38 special is not a particularly powerful gun. They're a compromise between recoil and penetration power. If it's not a dead accurate shot (which is highly unlikely in such scenarios) then follow on is not only justified, it's inevitable.

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So, you just execute hit-and-run quasi-libel attacks on us instead? Brilliant.

Dunno where you're coming from, but my take is this. Schools are disarmed. By law. "gun free" zones. Which in reality means that only the criminals/crazies will have guns.

This is just one of about a zillion reasons why my kids will NOT go to public schools. If no crazy shoots them up, they will have their minds filled with meaningless tripe that drives out reasoning skills.

I have yet to find ONE example of a mass shooting occuring where there were armed people capable of a response. They have all been in places where it is illegal to defend yourself. I regard such laws as an affront to civilised behaviour. Such laws should be ignored on the basis of reality.

Despite the rhetoric in the so-called news, cops do not have any duty to defend you. I am personally aware of at least three supreme court cases where this has been explicitly stated. In point of fact, even if they had such a duty, they would be unable to perform unless there was a one to one ratio of humans to cops.

Making the fantastical assumption that cops had the best interests of the sheep in their hearts, they are at best agents of vengeance after the fact. Given their abysmal 3-4 percent solve rate, they aren't even good at that. Most cases are broken by citizens. This is even obliquely admitted in the shows that glorify the police on ID and similar channels.

In the event of a sudden, armed attack, your two best assets are a cool head and a gun. Contrary to all the bravado and bullshit I frequently hear, in such an event you SHOULD shoot to kill. Not a head shot, though, unless you are insanely skilled. I'm a very good pistolero, and I would still shoot for the center of mass. Head shots are tough, and in that split second decision you do not have that kind of time. If you do, you can probably defuse the situation without shooting. The cooper pattern is your friend. (two to the chest, safety to the head. Quick.) Should the assailant survive, sure, let 'em live. The gun and you did their jobs. Said assailant is highly unlikely to try it again.

Again, contrary to popular opinion, a headshot is not invariably fatal, as demonstrated by the article in the OP. Dead center between or just above/below the eyes, pretty much. Deviate just a little, and the frontal sinuses do their job, absorbing impact and deflecting the bullet. Obviously less likely with more powerful bullets, but the most common pistol is a .22. Nasty little bastard, but not much peripheral damage. It's like being hit with a heavy needle. It either hits something vital or just punches a hole.

For home defense, especially for women, my recommendation is a shotgun. 12 gauge with a pistol grip, as the recoil is less likely to knock her down than a traditional buttstock. With a shotgun, you don't have to be real accurate, and the sound of the slide racking will put any potential assailant in a cold sweat. Up close, there just is no substitute unless you are an expert.

Personally, I prefer two pistols, but I am an expert shot. For my wife, I want a mossberg 500 "persuader" at easy reach.

Hopefully, she'll never need it, and I won't need my pistols except at the range. But it is better to be prepared. I would rather be heard by 12 than carried by six.

Ive been over this with Americans a dozen times, a dialog is not possible because like i said the cultures are too different.

Would you care to elaborate?  What part of this story would you disagree with? 

To clarify my own position, I'm not opposed to gun regulation per se; but I am opposed to efforts by anti-gun political factions attempting to impose social contraints that are presented as "sensible regulation".  For example, while the 2nd amendment most certainly does grant me the right to own & carry a weapon, that doesn't mean that I get to do so without conditions.  The CCW license movement that swept across the US during the 1990's is an excellent example of such.  I don't have to ask for permission to buy the handgun, but a formal process that notifies the police of my intent to carry concealed for my own protection is in my own interests, whether I were to call it a permit or a notice.  But the idea of people who don't understand how firearms actually work attempting to dictate the maximum number of rounds that I may have in my handgun is not "sensible regulation".  As noted, I carry a Sig Sauer Mosquito handgun, which is a medium compact framed semi-auto chambered in the very small 22 Long Rifle.  Statisticly speaking, a single shot from a 22LR isn't even lethal enough to even be considered a "lethal weapon" under the law, because less than 20% of adult single gunshot wound victims actually die, at least not from the initial trama.  (impact trama is the 'one-shot stopping power" that large caliber fans harp about)  So, should I ever get into a real firefight, I'm either going to have to be accurate enough to hit a vital organ (i.e. headshot through the eye socket, not likely under the influence of adrenaline) or I'm going to have to be able to hit my attacker several times rapidly to approximate the level of trama that a larger caliber weapon can achieve in a single shot.  Up to four when comparing a 22lr to a 45 Mag.  So artificial limitations on shot capacity only serves to favor the larger caliber handguns, is unlikely to ever have any non-negligble effect on the lethality of some crazed gunman on a rampage, which is the official reason for such a "sensible regulation".  Spend enough time listening to the anti-gun crowd and their ideas, and anyone who has any real experience with firearms will learn that the group is composed of two types of people; one group that doesn't understand how firearms work or how they can actually be used as a defensive tool to the improvement of socity, and another group that does know but is opposed to firearms for some political or ideological reason that is unrelated to their professed motivations.  It's the latter group that thinks up the details of the "sensible regulations" they then can easily sell to the former group, since the former group doesn't actualy know enough about firearms to know better and have long been conditioned to believe that pro-gun rights types are wrong in the head and shouldn't really be listened to.  I know that it's cliche, but it's still very true in politics.  Gun control isn't about controlling guns, it's about controlling the public debate; and the pro-gun crowd tend to be the least manipulatable group.  Even the long conditioned anti-gun crowd in Australia and Britain are starting to second guess their own presumptions, since they are finally acknowledging that they have a rising rate of violent crime while the US overall has a long running trend of falling crime.  While it's not fair to presume that the increase in CCW license holders is the only cause, or even the major cause, of such a falling crime rate; it is certainly a positive contribution to the net trend.  A fact that can be proven in every single state that has already passed such laws.

Really strange what different cultures consider as heroism.

Yes. Innocent until proven guilty/found civilly liable.

I'm going to answer this question in two parts, because there is a short answer and a long answer.

The short answer to "would you like a society in which everyonhe carries a gun?" is probably not.

The long answer is because we live in a society that, historicly speaking, has defaulted to permissiveness with defensive weapons, and as a result of that those who choose to carry a firearm in public are a self selected group.  Since they are self selecting, those same people make their daily choices based on the perceptions of risk versus inconvience.  When in an area, or choosing to proceed into an area, with a reputation of elevated risk of violent crime; such people are likely to carry.  The corrolary is that those same people are generally likely to leave the weapons at home when they travel in or through an area with a reputation of safety.  The percentage of people who carry all of the time is very small, and usually related to their occupation, i.e. cop, prosecutor, corporate investigator, etc.  The vast majority of this self-selecting group is very trustworthy with weapons, as my prior article should demonstrate.  As previously stated, I have a concealed carry license that is valid in upwards of 30 states today, but to be honest I rarely actually carry a weapon in public.  I live in one of the safest cities in the United States with over half a million residents, and it also happens to have one of the highest per capita rates of CCW license holders and the hightest per capita rate of class III weapons ownership in the United States.  So excluding the mandatory gun possession in Switzerland and like places, the highest rate of machine gun ownership on the entire planet, probably across all of human history.  Like Switzerland, crazy people are not unheard of, but misuse of those weapons is so rare that such incidents can be counted on one hand, if it's even happened here at all.

In summary, permission to carry a weapon is not equal to the practial reality that all adults would actually do so; and if a majroity of adults ever felt they needed to, then there are other things wrong with that society that gun control couldn't possiblely help resolve anyway.  I can see of no logical reason to not trust those who choose to carry that they know what they are doing.  Stats show that they are at least as trustworthy as the uniformed police in this regard, and gun control isn't going to improve that issue.


Those who choose to carry are under the same obligations as the police to not harm bystanders, and it's also a leap of logic to assume that every CCW gun owner is 1) carrying in the resturant and 2) willing to intervene on behalf of the store owner, or even other patrons.  Being robbed while heeled becomes a risk versus benefit calculation with regard to responding with force, since the robber doesn't know you're armed also.  Some choose to hand over the cash and deal with it latter.  But not having the gun means that is never an option if the situation were ever to arise.  I'm in favor of defaulting to the condition that my daughter has the choice to defend herself using whatever technology is available to her, at least until she personally demonstrates that she is not really an adult.  After all, we all know people who are just children walking around as adults; and if they should ever show that they are willing to harm others then they shouldn't be able to retain the right to carry a weapon.  But that is not most people.  That is, in fact, a very small fraction of adults; even in our childish and violent modern culture.  Again, history shows that those who are willing to go to the trouble and expense of getting a CCW license are exactly the kind of people that a free and safe socity would prefer to be in the majority among the armed in public.

yes. I think the default should be to trust. We do the same for a far more dangerous tool, the car. Any nut job can get a car and go on a horrendous killing spree. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing you do. If someone demonstrates they can't drive safely or sober, we take away their right to drive. I approach guns the same way.
As you point out, some will not rise to the occasion.

Would you really want to trust every adult with a weapon? There are a lot of stupid people in this country,and adrenaline can make even smart people do dumb things.

Yeah I don't want to debate the merits of the 2nd amendment either, just the practicalities. And I agree with you on your 2nd point, I think that smoking, twd, etc. is a much more important issue than guns.

I expected something like: Don't worry, a police car is coming in three minutes, hold on.

Your question is based on a society that is not already armed and is more or less moot.
The USA has 300M guns.   If we ban them, they do not go away as most are unregistered.   Therefore, there is no effiing way I will give up being armed when the people that seek to do harm will not obey any new 2nd amendment ignoring law.
But, why don't you look up the stats on accidental shootings vs. texting deaths or prescription deaths etc.   In a country of over 310M, it is very small.
I do not want to debate the entire merits of the 2nd amendment but another reason I support it is that no country in their right mind would attempt a land based invasion of a country that has an entire population armed.   The cost is too high.  Think Switzerland with 310M people.