Though experiment: If I were a criminal....

Neither is gun control.

 

How someone goes from self defense to lynching mob is an amazing twist of logic and exposes an underlying phobia, one demonstrating a lack of reason.

 

Read it and weep:
"Rather, our analysis concludes that residential burglary rates tend to increase with community gun prevalence."
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8926

 

We were discussing vigilante justice. Do try to keep up.

 

If a safer united states is truly desired above all else, it is necessary to consider all possible avenues equally in achieving such a goal. If executing violent known criminals would lead to a safer united states, it must be regarded as a viable course of action to undertake. Not every life is precious and worth saving. Some lives must be ended in order to save others.

 

I figured you would deliberately miss the point.

you think gun laws that only impact honest people need to be increased to prevent the criminals that those laws don't apply to from committing crimes?

that is one of the real disgusting facts of the anti gun movement. They push laws designed to harass honest people, which have no realistic hope of stopping crime and when those laws don't reduce crime, the anti rights coalition (which is the term commonly used among the pro-freedom groups) demands more gun laws designed to harass honest people

its a clever plot. push laws that won't work and use their failure to deter criminals as an excuse to push more laws that are designed to limit gun rights

the Universal Background check scheme is a perfect example. The ARC knows such checks won't stop criminals because we have 24 years of the Brady bill failing to impact violent crime. The ARC also knows that UBGC cannot be enforced. So when that scheme fails to deter criminals, the ARC will demand registration. Now registration cannot even be enforced against those who own guns illegally due to the fifth amendment. But of course if registration is passed, and won't deter crime then the ARC will want yet another law harassing honest gun owners

 

Nobody can keep up with you, your intellect is blinding

 

as a legal scholar, I note that self defense -such as shooting a criminal who is attacking you or you sniping a criminal who is beating your neighbor is NOT vigilante justice but clear cut examples of self defense. Now if someone beats your neighbor and flees and you get in your car, and follow him for 15 miles and then shoot him 6 times in the back when he gets out of his car-that would be vigilante justice

 

Do not sink to the level of the member Vegas Giants. You are better than that. You would not be engaged to this length if such were not truly the case.

If there is insufficient space in prisons for prosecuting criminals caught possessing firearms, despite such being a federal-level felony, what hope could there possibly be of prosecuting the general public if millions of private individuals simply refuse to comply with various firearm-related restrictions?

Self and home defense is not an act vigilante justice. The use of deadly force for the purpose of self defense has been held as a constitutional right by the united state supreme court.

 

Of course, the true objective isn't their stated diversion.

 

your understanding of the term vigilante justice apparently is of the same level as your understanding of firearms and their uses. would you like me to educate you as to what vigilante justice is and why my comments do not involve such a thing?

 

I have lived and worked in 3rd world countries and places where codified law doesn't exit, where everybody is armed. I can't imagine many of these liberals managing. Funny, while everyone is armed, there was far less violence than the Dem bastions of Chicago or LA.

 

Really.

Wonder how they knew which houses had guns, and which ones did not?

Oh here it is in the first paragraph: They based it on how many suicides happened, and only included areas over 100k population

What an amazing piece of work that was.

 

Fake polls of course..Lol

 

What does this mean with regards to gun control?

 

We have that in Virginia. Felons in possession of firearms face up to 5 years imprisonment. If the prior felony is less than ten years old the mandatory minimum sentence (read: cannot be lowered by the judge) is 2 years. If the prior felony is a crime of violence then the mandatory sentence is 5 years. We also have a three year mandatory sentence for using a firearm in a crime, 3 years mandatory for possessing a firearm and certain drugs, and 5 years mandatory for possessing a firearm while selling or possessing with the intent to sell drugs. These punishments must be imposed separately from and run in addition to time imposed for other underlying crimes (the murder, the drug deal, etc) so gun criminals cannot have their sentences run “concurrently” and get the “group discount” on their criminal activity.

I can’t tell you what the deterrent value of these laws is. It simply cannot be measured with any certainty. My impression was the deterrent was greatest when the laws were first passed in 1995. That’s when the punishments were new and when we had the most “scare you away from the gun” press coverage. Nowadays I feel (but again cannot measure) that the deterrent effect has been blunted somewhat as the felon population who wants to have guns (particularly the laugh now/cry later mentality of the gang culture) appears to have come to a fatalistic acceptance that these enhanced punishments are just an increase in the cost of doing business.

This does not mean these laws are failures, however. What these laws do accomplish (when enforced) is the punishment of the guilty, and they limit the ability of these persons to continue to commit crimes. Every year these felons spend in prison is a year they are not committing crimes (at least outside the prison).

The question of criminal laws is always one of philosophy. The entire philosophy behind our criminal justice system is the punishment of the guilty and the assurance that we do not punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. That is what laws are properly designed to do, and that is what these laws accomplish. They punish the guilty while protecting the rights of the innocent.

The desire for safety is a laudable goal, but even assuming it is a realistic goal it cannot be great enough to overcome the moral imperative that we do not punish someone who has committed no crime by denying them a fundamental right. The 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure is the greatest impediment to the effective discovery and prosecution of crimes that exists in our nation. And yet it is properly viewed as a bedrock principle of individual liberty, and we see universal condemnation of any attempt to repeal it in the cause of societal safety. In my opinion, the RKBA is not the red headed stepchild of the Bill of Rights, and it deserves similar protection.

The RKBA is a right of peaceful possession and a right to have arms to defend yourself if necessary. It is not a right to commit crimes of violence. If you have a proposed law that attacks gun crime while protecting the RKBA then of course I am with you. But you will forgive me if I choose to guard my liberty by carefully reviewing gun control proposals made by people who have already espoused that Heller is wrongly decided and the individual RKBA should not exist. When someone makes it no secret that their opinion is a right should not exist then by default they believe any amount of infringement is morally acceptable in the name of safety. Laws proposed by such persons are to me automatically suspect and require a heightened degree of scrutiny. I'm not saying I can't accept a law proposed by that person. I just treat them similarly to how Regan dealt with the Soviets: Trust but verify.

At least that is my belief.

---

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."--Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485 (192 (Brandeis, dissenting).

 

Interesting. I have never contemplated guns as a murder weapon. I guess it's because I'm a basically peaceful person.

 

Didn't do much to stop the Miami cocaine cowboy drug wars, mostly done with illegally owned automatic weapons. Florida's way out of the crazy violence of the 1980s was to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons if they met the qualifications, not requiring the arbitrary opinion of local police officers.

 

For a burglary, of course the first would be the criminal's choice. For a home invasion, the second. Also, based on what I've been able to get out of news reports, most home invasions are related to the drug business--either a dealer raiding another dealer, or a customer raiding a dealer (or mistaken identity).

http://www.policemag.com/channel/gangs/articles/2010/11/side-effects.aspx
http://www.masslive.com/news/worcester/index.ssf/2016/02/drug_dealing_the_common_thread.html

 

In my experience, the vast majority of home invasions are for property crime. They steal items that can be sold/pawned/traded. The motive is almost always to feed a drug habit. The majority of home invasions are by unarmed persons, committed during the day, when it appears that no one is home. If the house looks unoccupied and in a location where neighbors do not appear to be around or at home, then they go to the front door and knock. If someone answers then they give an excuse for being there. An example is they are looking for a friend man named “John” and heard he lived there—not his house?—sorry for the mistake and have a good day sir—and they move on to another target. If no one answers the front door then they go around back and kick in that door or bust out the window. The homeowner comes home from work and discovers his back door has been kicked in and portable items that have a resale value have been stolen. They don’t really care if guns can be stolen or not, because the motive is quick money to go party with drugs and jewelry and TVs are just as valuable. Sure they will take guns if they find them, but they are seldom the driving motive. The likelihood of this most common form of burglary is based primarily upon location, location, and location. "The house looks like it might have nice stuff" is an attractant, but can we quickly get in and out of the house without being spotted is the ultimate decider when criminals are riding around casing burglary locations.

At night or at other times when the homeowner is obviously there, then the dynamic changes. The biggest question or uncertainty in the mind of the criminal becomes what kind of resistance will I meet.

Crime happens for any number of motives: anger, hatred, revenge, greed, envy, or even to alleviate sheer boredom. But there are only three factors which deter crime that someone considers when thinking about committing a crime:

1. What is the likelihood I will be caught?
   
   
2. What is the likelihood that if caught I will receive a punishment I am unwilling to accept?
   
   
3. What is the likelihood that I (or to a lesser extent someone else I care for) will be seriously injured or killed during the attempt of this crime?
   

The first two factors are largely in the hands of your public servants. The last one is entirely in your hands.

 

Lynch mobs are composed of Cowards and Criminals that have dedicated themselves to a Life of Crime and have no Relation to law abiding Gun owners or Personal defense and the quoted post was a weak attempt to derail or divert a good topic and discussion.

 

Its a fair question.
While you are defending the idea of disarming me and my family, would you also disarm law enforcement?
What about armored car guards?

 

The difference is definitions. I view a home invasion as a different thing than a burglary. Burglaries are property crime. I define burglary as coming into a house by stealth, either when the owner is gone or when the owner is there, but with the intent of getting out without confrontation.

Home invasions tend to be drug crimes (per many police departments). Home invasion is coming into a home guns drawn, with the intention of getting things as fast as possible as well as to intimidate or physically harm the victim, with a show of overwhelming force.

 

To address the above. A criminal who acted like the above would soon be public enemy #1, and the police would make it their top priority to kill them, in the process of capturing them.

 

Zip guns were all the rage back in the day. Homemade single shooters...

If a criminal wants a weapon that fires bullets, a criminal will get them, or make them, regardless of gun laws.