I don´t know what to say. It´s.... It´s just so insane

This is where I adore America. There you have the right to defend yourself, your family and your property. In Sweden you get punished for it.

Damn I hate this country´s laws. I do. In the true nature of pure hatred, that´s what I feel.

Oh, some of the laws here are outrageous. And people like to bend the self defense right to thier own use.

Yeah, that´s the bad part. People saying they defended themselves when really they were attacking. But still.

Anyway, I´m off for tonight. Gotta cool down I think I´m glad you didn´t get hurt or anything Kobby. Maybe you should get a dog?

A bigger dog?

In America it is recognized that you have a right to defend yourself if you believe that you are in imminent danger.

I've never really understood countries like the UK or Sweden who make it a crime to protect yourself. I can understand to an extent countries that have chosen to restrict ownership of certain weapons as that is their right but I cannot understand the reasoning behind making it a crime to defend one's own life, especially with non lethal force.

The main reason I own firearms is because a gun is a useful tool for self defense. I'd prefer not to have to use one and thankfully most of the time if you pull a firearm on somebody who is trying to rob you and they're unarmed, they run away.

Another useful piece of advice is if you know that someone is trying to break in but they haven't been successful yet, turn on the lights and yell that the police are on their way. Hopefully it will scare them off.

In the UK, we've recently had a few high-profile cases where either the police initially, or the judge at court level has released several people who've killed burgulars whilst defending their home...The Conservative Party, in their wisdom has - although not exactly changed the law - enacted some sort of "Defending your own keep" kind of thing...So as long as you can prove you were in mortal danger, you can defend to the max...

This is one reason why they will get my vote at the next General Election...

This post has been edited by McBadgere: Aug 10 2013, 09:45 PM

There are lots of instances even recently in the UK where people have defended themselves and been charged with crimes because of it. I'm just saying that they have a record in the UK of prosecuting people who have acted in self defense.

I hope that some day at least, it is recognized as a human right to defend against harm universally.

It's also based largely on State to State as well. America isn't a uniform set of laws from sea to shining sea, and we're better compared to a very large union of countries that agree on a core set of Federal Laws but change from here to there.

For example, in Texas they do have almost free-and-clear 'Castle Doctrine'. If someone sets foot on your property, and you feel threatened or the need to defend yourself you can use any and all necessary force in that regard and it wouldn't even go to trial.

Whereas, in my state of California, we have very strict gun control laws. You'd need a permit for concealed carry, which you won't get, and though we have a 'No Duty to Retreat' law, if you shoot someone in self-defense you'd best get a lawyer. If they die, there will be an investigation and possibly have charges brought against you.

Some advice that I absolutely did not get from a member of the Sheriff Deputies was 'shoot to kill, witnesses are bad in this case. Do not shoot them in the back, that means it went from defense to murder, despite the fact that that's ridiculous. Say *nothing* to the Police involved in the investigation, no matter how understanding or friendly they happen to be, what say *can* and *will* be used against you. Call your lawyer. Alternatively, tazer's are now perfectly legal under California Law, and don't qualify under 'Assault with a deadly weapon'."

Or, just hire Colenol Mustard as your personal bodyguard.

If I win this $400 Million dollar jackpot, your British Ahrse is drinkin' with and winning my barfights protecting me!

TOO. MUCH. RAIN.

U.S.A laws, some laws(there are some that I strongly, and I mean strongly, disagree with) are good. The defense laws are very good here, much better than in Brazil where concealed carry is a big and shooting robbers is a crime.

That's part of the reason I'm scared to leave Texas. If I'm threatened, I can defend myself and not get worried. Other places, not always the case

ALCOHOL AT THE BAT CAVESSSSS

I think here in CT, if you kill someone, even in self defense, you'll get in trouble.

Vermont has the most liberal laws in terms of gun carry. It's written into the State constitution and they were the representative party that suggested and strongly encouraged the right to bear arms into the Bill of Rights.

You don't need a permit for concealed carry and I think the only restriction is you have to inform a peace officer should you be detained that you have one and where you're carrying it. Even then, I don't think they have the authorization to deprive you of the weapon (on paper anyways) as part of the whole theory of having an armed society is to enable the People to effectively resist tyranny.

Gee...I wonder why this and so many other countries are deadset on 'Gun Control' and eliminating it's use.

Reminds me of the 'Sword Hunts' the Warlords of Japan once did. After they took over an area they would disarm the local enemy populace, one of them had the public relations idea to turn the confiscated swords into a large Buddha statue at the very least.

But, an armed society is a polite society.

I know that there are those of you that have opinions that will strongly differ from mine, and in spite of it, I do not actually own any firearms. That being said, I do find the crimes that are committed with them equally horrendous.

I have an older cousin, who happens to be Gay. He had a former beau who was killed in a robbery a number of years ago, late seventies if I recall correctly. He's an avid Gun Control proponent, and despite our nearly identical Libertarian ideologies, we're often at odds on this.

My stance with him, is that he made the mistake of saying that a gun killed this person, not the sociopaths that did it. If they didn't have guns, they would have used bats or crowbars or fists. His death would still have occurred if they had a mind to do it, and it would have been more painful to boot. (Coroners said he died almost instantly.)

Now, if *everyone* were armed. He could have defended himself, the passerbys on the street who ran away in fear from the sounds of gunshots that testified at the trial could have assisted. Et cetera, et cetera.

The recent school shootings are perhaps even more unthinkable, with innocent children as victims. The guy may have done it if he did not have guns, he may have gotten black market versions. Unknowable and I see no purpose in debating that. The point that I instead wish to confer is: How did we protect these children?

We put up a sign that said: "No guns allowed on school property!" and when someone violated that law, we sent in Officers, with guns.

Just my stance on things. I think if we are all trained in proper, responsible uses of our tools there would be much less of a concern going around as there is now.

I agree pretty strongly with Black Hand on this. Gun control cannot work in America, for reasons that anyone can understand if they simply use logic.

The first and most obvious is that the country is huge and shares massive borders with Canada and Mexico. We can't even stop drugs from entering in quantities large enough to supply the entire nation, how are we going to stop weapons (which are harder to detect and can be broken apart to make them easier to smuggle) from entering?

They're still experiencing gun crimes (and lots of violent crime in general) in the UK years after all but completely banning ownership and the UK is a tiny island in comparison to the United States. I'm not implying that the UK is a terrible place to live or anything, just that making firearms extremely difficult to procure hasn't done anything but increased other types of violent crime. The government there believes that it can regulate violence, even working to try and ban kitchen knives because there are so many stabbings.

If people want to cause damage, then they will. Laws will never stop someone who is determined to cause harm. The Boston bombers for instance created enough explosives to injure hundreds of people from simple household materials. Gun control legislation in the past has proven to be completely ineffective as well, the Columbine school massacre was done with "assault weapons ban" compliant weapons, excluding one high cap pistol.

Lets say that the United States just decided one day that they'd had enough and all guns would be illegal. How do you pick them up? There are over 300 million firearms in the USA and the number rises every day. Imagine how much cash it would take to do it...the task just wouldn't be possible.

Alright so lets control magazines instead. From this point on, all magazines are limited to ten rounds. Alright but for every gun built there are probably over a dozen magazines built for it. Most gun owners have multiple magazines for every firearm they own, even if there were only two hi cap mags per firearm, that still leaves hundreds of millions of high capacity magazines that would have to be picked up.

Simply put, gun crime in America isn't going to be solved by putting up "no mass shootings" signs or by trying to limit magazine capacities in a country that is already saturated with firearms and magazines that would not be compliant. The costs of trying to pick all of them up would be astronomical and it would most likely take centuries to dry up the supply already here.

I don't have the answer of how to fix America's violent crime but Chicago is a perfect example of how gun control laws are not fixing the problem. They've got some of the strictest laws in the nation and the highest murder rate per capita.

WOW! I did not know that. I don't mean this the way it sounds, but that made me laugh. Not because stabbings and violent crime is funny, but because: talk about missing the point!!

I'd say that, they're treating the symptoms instead of the cause, even then...no...then it'll bricks and large stones will be banned...SMH.

Politicians everywhere...have failed basic intelligence and logic it would seem.

Banning weapons doesn't do much use. I mean, seriously?


Criminals suuuure love to follow laws, don't they?


"Oh, I'm gonna stop my criminal activity and get rid of my weapons because they've been banned!"





Banning weapons isn't going to do much. I think they need to strengthen security overall.

Well banning weapons means they're banned from regular stores,making them harder to get.

They know it won't ever be impossible to get weapons but they know they can make them harder to get.

Living in the UK... yeah, it can get a little ridiculous. Knives with a folding blade which you can lock to fix in place are, AFAIK, illegal - my brother and I ran afoul of this once when we wanted to buy one for a camping trip (100% less chance of accidentally cutting off your fingers, what's not to like?). It's illegal to carry anything but small folding knives (e.g. Swiss Army) in public without a good reason (e.g. you just bought a kitchen knife in a store and need to carry it home). I believe mace and pepperspray are both illegal... in fact, I think it's illegal to carry anything at all if you intend to use it as a weapon, including for self-defense. The overall attitude in the UK is that you shouldn't *have* to defend yourself, this being what the police are for, and if they simply arrest *everyone* carrying a weapon they'll definitely get the gang members.

One has to say - I think I heard (read: if you ask me for a citation for this I'll have to consult Google) that although knife crime has risen, the overall homicide rate in the UK has still gone down and is a lot lower than the US for comparable areas - it being harder to kill someone with a knife than with a gun, especially if you don't know what you're doing. Of course, the UK has pretty much banned firearms for decades and happens to be an island (+ Northern Ireland) which makes it easier to control what's coming into the country.

On purpose, that´s the hardest thing to digest.

Disarming a population is only one of the steps to turn a democracy into a dictatorship. At least an open dictatorship..

And whatever laws, it´s always only the law-abiding ones that are being regulated anyway. Criminals don´t give two s***ts whatever the law says, right? And as it is, it´s the criminals who have the guns, we don´t. Which makes me scared when I think about who controls the military, the ones with the really heavy guns?

The politicians

Exactly!!! I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but in the u.s, one of the rights is the right to bear arms. They were even considering repealing that right after the shooting in Newtown.