Gun Owners!

[EquipmentJunkie]

It is interesting to note that most home burglaries involve casing and are done during daytime surprisingly enough. One guy told me "why would I do it at night, that's when people are home with their guns." Most are cowardly in nature as Erik mentioned and want anything but conflict...this scenario of hostage taking criminals (in a residential area) borders on paranoia and even in that situation no one is capable of handling that situation alone no matter what firearm they have, I know I'm not.

[Chilli Dipper]

As someone with no interest in guns, I find this discussion fascinating.

[Laxplayer201092]

So is hitting a golf shot on the 18th hole with $500 on the line. Some people can handle it, though, and from what I'm reading you're not one of them.

How is anything ive said tell you that i cant handle stress?

Ok, and lets say that when you yell, he stays? sure, 90% of the time he will leave, but that means 10% of the time, he will stay. So then what? your plan is to put a bullet through a wall? And my family situation is a bit different than most. I am home alone alot, or it is just me an my mom or me and my sister. My parents really arent here, so it IS my job to protect myself.

[iacas]

Ok, and lets say that when you yell, he stays? sure, 90% of the time he will leave, but that means 10% of the time, he will stay. So then what? your plan is to put a bullet through a wall?

To be fair, the 90% is probably more like 98%. Or 99%. And in fact the odds of someone robbing a home with armed homeowners is already greatly decreased to begin with.

And yes, they often tell you in firearms safety/self defense type classes that if saying "I have a gun" is not enough, firing a round tells the invader that you in fact DO have a gun, it's loaded, and you'll use it.

[Laxplayer201092]

ohhh. i was kinda confused by the thought that you would fire through a wall, when NM golf stated earlier about how deadly rounds can be when fired through walls.

So your firing the gun is more of a deterence, such as racking a shotgun yes?

[iacas]

ohhh. i was kinda confused by the thought that you would fire through a wall, when NM golf stated earlier about how deadly rounds can be when fired through walls.

Uh huh. That's what they teach you. Some even tell you that if you want, you can put a blank in the clip first, because that way you can fire it at a wall without even doing damage to your house.

(And since the first rule of gun safety is to always treat every gun as if it's loaded, you wouldn't aim it at a person or out a window or anywhere anyway, even if you're 100% confident it's a blank.)

[RMD]

My wife and I both a concealed carry permits.
She carries:
1) Glock 19
2) S&W; Hammerless Snub Nose 38
I carry:
1) H&K; USP Compact 9mm
2) Ruger LCP 380
The Ruger is a recent purchase and is small enough to carry in yout pants pocket. I bought it not as a primary weapon, but as my "walk the dog" gun. It only weighs 9.4 ounces unloaded, holds 7 rounds, and I can shoot a 6" group at 11 yards.
My next purchase is a Remington 860 12 guage shotgun with 18" barrel. Just a little something to keep in the bedroom.
My advice; buy plenty of ammo before January 20.

[whip_it_out]

Just my two cents, but I don't understand why anyone who isn't in the military or law enforcement would need-or want- an automatic weapon. It's not like you're gonna go hunting with it, or you need it for self defense.
I know people like to shoot them at ranges, but, I really don't think people should own automatics.

Im not saying people can't own guns, Im all for people owning hunting rifles and shot guns, and pistols for defense. So, don't try and throw that at me.

[Awsi Dooger]

As someone with no interest in guns, I find this discussion fascinating.

I have no interest, other than wishing they were banned. Default to mathematical common sense: The gun sits there 24/7/365. That basic truth overwhelms any theoretical benefit to successfully summon it versus an intruder. Meanwhile, every day presents opportunity for an accident while cleaning, grabbed in an emotional dispute, stolen by a neighbor, stumbled upon by a curious teenager, you name it.

I deal with odds literally every day, and owning a gun flunks any rational application. It is old West macho defensive nonsense, believing what you want to believe. The most pathetic aspect is studies when gun owners are quizzed whether using their weapon prevented a deadly attack. I've seen those figures and it's obscene. The gun owners are something like 20 times more likely to assess the situation as being perilous, and the gun to have prevented it, than the actual assessment indicates once the factors are reviewed by an outside agency. I wish I had that link. Right now I can't find it. When someone sent it to me by email they asked my estimate. I said 10 times overblown. Turned out it was 20. Gun owners are also significantly more likely to say they've encountered a life threatening situation. That's another aspect that reveals the paranoia. There's no reason gun owners and non-gun owners should have wildly different experience in that regard. It's not like gun ownership begins in massive percentage after experiencing a threatening scenario. I've seen that broken down before. Yet gun owners are several times more likely to say they have had a life threatening experience. It goes along with the mindset, rationalizing their ownership by misrepresentation of past events, often inventing events that never occurred. I don't want to debate this issue. No one ever changes anyone's mind. I'm very thankful my dad is a sociologist and pointed me to related books on the topic.

[NM Golf]

I have no interest, other than wishing they were banned.................. I don't want to debate this issue. No one ever changes anyone's mind. I'm very thankful my dad is a sociologist and pointed me to related books on the topic.

Well hopefully if you get broken into you have those books available to throw at the intruder.

[TheWarHound]

Picked up a new Springfield Armory XP .45ACP, with meprolight tritium night sites, love it. Ran over 500 rounds through it, no failures at all, using ball and various HP ammo. Grip angle and size fit me much better than the G21, even the G21SF. Points great, shoots great, accurate, dependable, and has 13 rounds of .45 goodness in every mag. New bedside gun, with Streamlight M3 on the accessory rail. I am very pleased with this purchase.

I have been an avid shooter all my life, own many guns, CMP Pistol Instructor, CCW license holder, military vet. I own guns because I like guns. My friends and I go shooting often (Clay pigeons, target shooting, 3-gun shoots, plinking and paper-punching).

I also own guns to protect me and my family. It is a shitty world out there, and I for one don't depend on the local law enforcement to get here in time for a crisis, living out here in the boonies. I keep a .45 on my night stand, a Mossy 590A1 in the closet next to the bed, and a gun safe full of guns and ammo.

If someone broke in my home, at night, with me home, the only hesitation I would have is which gun to shoot them with, and the only thing I would feel would be recoil. No yelling, no fumbling with a phone to call 911, no firing blanks or racking a round in a pump shotgun. Just "Do unto others before they do unto you."

JMHO, YMMV,

Steve

[misty_mountainhop]

My oh my sir..

I'm going to regret this and yes, I know little of what I speak because we don't have a 'normal' situation like the U.S. with guns pretty much being the norm.

Brian, you are absolutely right that it's people who are the problem and they'll kill each other with whatever comes to hand. I, unlike many here however think that freely available firearms just exacerbate the problem. I don't know the answers, I never said I did. I had to laugh at your "unarmed police" comment. We're having a nice little inquiry at the moment into why an unarmed Brazilian was shot 7 times in the head by a plain clothes firearms officer and witnesses now apparently tell us all that nothing what-so-ever was shouted; he was just murdered because of the "war on terror". The U.K. is no fairy tale country. We seem to have stabbings on a routine basis now. My point would be that escalation by allowing free access to firearms for self-defence doesn't help. You are of course right that a shotgun would pretty much do the job and I can see the logic for people owning them. It's a complex issue and as I said, I haven't a clue what would be the answer. Personally, I just don't like firearms.

As far as you ,misty_mountaintop, are concerned.......shut-up you whiny, preachy so and so. We don't need your opinion. Didn't we kick your a$$ in a war some years back for that exact reason?

Oh, that is just too hysterically funny for words. People like you don't merit a response but you're going to have one all the same. That's a typical bit of jumped up ranting because you don't like something someone else has said. I know...I don't like them so lets kill them!

Yes, well done. You won your independence and I'm glad you did. The world has moved on....but maybe not in your head. You have a great country with a history of great, visionary people but unfortunately, as you demonstrate, you also have some cretins living there. Worryingly, they appear to be armed.

[TheWarHound]

The Supreme Court finally ruled that the Second Amendment applies to the citizens owning guns, instead of the established militia.

We have the right to keep and bare arms. If you don't want to exercise your right, fine. If you don't want to own a firearm, fine.

But left-wing idjits DO NOT have the right to keep me from owning firearms. Do citizens NEED full-auto hardware? Personally, I don't think so. But, like golf and knitting and tiddly-winks, full-auto weapons can be a hobby. The price and paperwork and restrictions can keep full-auto weapons in the hands of a few people who absolutely love to rock-n-roll on full auto. The average citizen can't afford a full-auto weapon.

Do I have an assault rifle? Yes, love my Bushy M4gery. Do I have high-cap handgun magazines? Yes, plenty of them. I even have a bayonet lug on my Mossy 590A1 shotgun (I don't own a bayonet, never figured out why I would need one on the end of a scattergun, but if I wanted one, I can have a pig-sticker on the end of it).

I feel, like Robert Heinlein, "an armed society is a polite society". I like knowing criminals may not break into my home some night knowing I would shoot the shit out of them. I like knowing my 19 year-old daughter has a 28ga shotgun in her closet, and knows how to use it safely and efficiently (thank God for Junior ROTC, and the CMP).

Although it sounds cliche, lack of education is the problem. Not firearms. Not assault weapons. Humans were efficient killers when all we had was sharp bits of metal, sticks, and rocks. Ask the survivors of Troy and Carthage. If we didn't have guns, people would just use knives, clubs (non-golfing, I hope . . . although a 2- or 3-iron would not be bad to 'ware boarders with), rocks, bricks, sticks, etc.

Another reason for the gun culture in the US is hunting. As a kid, I hunted, and ate, rabbit, squirrel, quail, pigeon, grouse, and deer. As an adult, I do a little deer hunting and bird hunting. 100 years ago, a lot of people depended on hunting to feed their famalies. And for anyone who hasn't had venison tenderloins fried in butter, you don't know what they are missing.

Handguns, for me, is like insurance . . . you never need a handgun unless you really need a handgun. Same as auto collision insurance. Or fire insurance.

So, here in the great US of A, firearms are a choice . . . but the Right is guaranteed.

Steve

[iacas]

Default to mathematical common sense: The gun sits there 24/7/365. That basic truth overwhelms any theoretical benefit to successfully summon it versus an intruder. Meanwhile, every day presents opportunity for an accident while cleaning, grabbed in an emotional dispute, stolen by a neighbor, stumbled upon by a curious teenager, you name it.

Awsi, you might think that's the common sense, but among the criminologists I've read that have done actual studies, and the common sense answer is often wrong.

In areas of high gun ownership, crime is lower. Armed victims are 3x more likely to survive an attack or escape without serious injury than an unarmed victim. Suicides are often counted in U.S. gun crime statistics but aren't counted in other countries, which un-evens the statistics. I also think I remember hearing something like this: if you remove black-on-black gun crime from the statistics, gun crimes in the U.S. are on the same level as virtually every other country. Many criminologists believe that gun crime is an economic problem, not a "gun" problem.

I deal with odds literally every day, and owning a gun flunks any rational application.

With all due respect, you're wrong, and you're not a criminologist. I'll take their word over yours, and I've read plenty of books by criminologists who start out opposed to guns but, through study, come to support their ownership.

The odds of my guns ever being used for anything but their intended purpose is as about as close to zero as it can get. I'm confident in that because my wife and child are educated and I've taken the proper precautions in terms of locking the gun up, etc. However, should I ever face the unfortunate situation of someone coming into my house, I will certainly take comfort in the fact that I can protect myself and my family. I see it as something I never hope to have to do, but also something that's my responsibility: to protect and take care of my family. Your dad may be a sociologist, but from my reading he seems to be in the minority, and he seems to be pushing a pretty hard left-wing agenda on guns towards you. More kids drown in pools each year than are shot by guns, and that includes the unfortunate kids caught in drive-bys in the ghettos. The gun argument, for me, comes down to two viewpoints. The Democrats push the emotional angle: "do we want our poor children to risk being slaughtered by guns?." They'll cite school shootings. When you watch crime reports on the evening news, they'll often show a handgun whether or not firearms were even used. The Republican side will often simply rely on facts and the Bill of Rights. When the UK banned guns, violent crimes rose. Home invaders didn't have to fear being shot, after all, so "wheeeeee" for them. Even Michael Moore's dumb "documentary" on guns exposed some simple truths. For example, crime is high in Detroit, but across the river in Canada where gun ownership is even higher, there's little to no crime. Why? Vastly different economic situations. Canada doesn't have a bunch of "ghetto" regions. Gun violence is an economic problem, not a social one.

I deal with odds literally every day, and owning a gun flunks any rational application.

To get back to this, even if I never intended to shoot anyone if they should ever invade my home, guns can be used for target shooting or for hunting, both of which I'd consider entirely "rational application."

Not everyone who owns a gun treats it properly. But the vast majority do, and guns aren't going off while being cleaned left and right, kids aren't accessing their dad's hunting rifle every other day, and so on. Though the Democrats would love for people to believe it...

[TheWarHound]

Getting back to the original topic, and away from gun- and anti-gun bashers:

Hey all you gun nuts!

Newest purchase was the SA XP .45 Tactical. Great shooter. When I want extreme accuracy at long (50-75 yds) distance, I use my Glock 34 Practical/Tactical. The G34 is IMHO the best Glock made. The extended bbl. makes it by far the most accurate, and the Heinie sites are awesome.

I still practice with my AR, and instead of a Leo or ACOG, try one of the Aimpoint holographic reflex sites. I picked up a couple of the ML2's on ar15.com a couple of years back, like new, for less than $250 each. The ML2 just fits and feels better to me, and I love keeping both eyes open while speed shooting. Makes you wonder why it took so long for Colonel Jeff Cooper's "Scout Scope" idea to catch on. My next purchase is going to be a baby Glock in 9mm. 10 round mags, great CCW, really neat pocket rocket. I hope the Democrats don't start the whole weapon ban again, but if they do, we just ride it out, like we did the last one. Hopefully people will come to their senses, and understand that it is people, not guns, that causes violence and crime. Steve

[Fat Slice]

I have my very reliable Sig P228, a Mossberg with a riot stock and barrel, and a couple of plinkers. If I end up moving to the country, I'll start looking for a rifle.

[alf174]

I own a Glock 33 (.357sig), a Walther P22 for plinking, a Rossi 357 2" revolver, a couple of collector revolvers, and 6-7 target grade shotguns. I haven't opted for a carry permit because I haven't felt the need for one however I have attend the classes, a few IDPA matches, and visit the range to stay in practice. I believe in the castle doctrine and prefer a short barreled shotgun with a extremely strong flashlight for defense in the house.

My real love is target shooting with shotguns: trap, skeet, sporting clays, and helice. Before the golf bug got me, it wasn't unusual for me to register 20,000 ATA targets a year while traveling all over the country shooting at different clubs. Though I shoot a lot less now (300 a week at most), I'm still the treasurer at a local sportsmens club.

I understand the fear many people have of firearms but I believe its out of ignorance. Before I was 40 years old, I had never touched a firearm. Education is the key.

[Klew]

As someone with no interest in guns, I find this discussion fascinating.

++++++1. I do find this discussion fascinating!!

I own a LOT of firearms (more of a collector), not a member of NRA, and I currently have no live ammo under my roof. Recently had some weirdo in my backyard in the dead of night. (I live in a nice affluent neighborhood, and lately we have had rich 20 year olds ripping off people because of boredom.) In my old days, I prolly would have gone Benelli on him, thank God I have matured. to be continued...