I also believe most outposts to have marksmanship and hunter safety and firearms safety since they all are merits you can earn. I did notice you didn't answer my question at the last of my last post so here is another one. If you are married and possibly have children and someone broke into your house at night and was assaulting or trying to rape them would you use deadly force to stop them and would you wish that you did have a firearm to stop them. Even if you are not married and have no children you should be able to answer this one. Here's another one: if firearms don't really deter crime then why don't you post a sign at your front door letting everyone know ( criminals included ) that you don't have a firearm in your house. And last but not least, I may not be a highly educated person but I am a Police Officer so I do see first hand on how crime works and that many many times law abiding citizens with firearms DO prevent crimes!!
Travis Maddox
Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.
Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology.
Even those who don't like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, "What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. . . . I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence." Wolfgang, "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188.
Wolfgang says there is no "contrary evidence." Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls-- one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times-- that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," Research in Brief (May 1997).
As for Dr. Kleck, readers of his materials may be interested to know that he is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate.
From: Victor Zalakos <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Travis Wayne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [RR] Bowling for Colombine Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 10:28:22 +1000
Thanks for your input to this debate Travis.
I guess crimes may be prevented by the use of guns, although the website you cite doesn't really provide hard facts for the statistics it presents. It refers to a book by an academic rather than publicly available "hard statistics" prepared by government agencies.
Since those "statistics" have not been subject to peer review and academic scrutiny, they shouldn't really be used as proof of anything other than the authors opinion...which may or may not be valid.
In fact, some of the statistics your quote appear quite unbelievable.
For example, you say that 192,000 women who avoided a rape through the use of a firearm.
That is an extremely large number, given the base of rape cases in the USA in 2001 was 84,000.
Just doesn't seem logical. The term was meant to be "sexual assult" or which there were 249,000 in 2001... [RAINN calculation based on USDOJ NCVS data, http://www.rainn.org/90seconds.html).
Care is needed in citing statistics.
How do I know?
Guess who's completing a unit on Advanced Research Methods and Statistics :-)
Victor.
At 05:14 PM 23/07/2003 -0500, Travis Wayne wrote:<?xml:namespace prefix="v" /><?xml:namespace prefix="o" />
I guess you're unaware that firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens prevent over 2.4 million crimes a year here in the U.S., that's everything from stealing to murder. That means guns are used 60 times more for good than for evil. Also 92% of those 2.4 million times the gun is merely brandished. More than 192,000 women used a firearm in 1995 to prevent being raped. Criminals also avoid armed citizens : Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one weapon in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.
Our founding fathers, who I believe most were Christians, believed in fighting for the right to serve and worship God even if it meant taking up arms.
Question: If the government banned the practice of Christianity would you stand up and fight for God and even die for God or would you hide out in some cave and let the world go strait to hell?
Travis
<http://www.gunowners.org/fs9504.htm>http://www.gunowners.org/fs9504.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Victor Zalakos To: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 4:30 PM Subject: Re: [RR] Bowling for Colombine
Actually the issue is not gun control per-say.
It is the logical foundation behind the practise of christians essentially worshipping guns more than the teaching of Jesus.
There is evil and there is sin.
But we who have the Holy Spirit within should have no choice in this matter.
At 04:15 AM 24/07/2003 +1000, Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson wrote:Gun control is an emotional and controversial issue.
You may be able to do some good with gun control. You can, however, never stop the problem by eliminating guns, and you can never eliminate guns. In PNG, guns are mostly illegal (except a few for police officers and the PNG Defence Force, and an occasional registered weapon), and yet criminals still smuggle or manufacture guns and use them in crimes there.
The idea that you can stop crime by removing all weapons is rather ignorant, since there are ALWAYS weapons of opportunity available when murder is in someone's heart. I face that extreme fear-based irrationality every time I get on a commercial airplane, now. Never in the history of the universe has anyone hijacked an airplane with tweezers, but they are forbidden to be carried on the airplane. Frankly, I believe that commercial aircraft would be safer if everyone were allowed to carry pocket knives again. Anyone attempting to hijack a plane would almost certainly bleed to death before he could complete his mass murder.
The idea that it is a Christian duty for civilians to all carry deadly weapons and be willing to use them and take the law into your own hands is another idea that I have difficulty accepting, but I've seen it practiced and taught.
At 16:23 22-07-03 -0400, Mike Burke wrote:I think it's just the Devil doing that in which he was supposed to do before the Lord comes back. I can see this as clearly as you do. It's the Devil going down and taking as many as he can with him. The Devil is preying on the weak minded and taking advantage of it by twisting the truth around and getting everyone to believe in their own contradictions.
Am I not correct about what this really is?
Iron Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Victor Zalakos To: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 21, 2003 6:26 PM Subject: Re: [RR] Bowling for Colombine
This continues to trouble me. Perhaps you can explain to a foreigner...
Why is it that American Christians, will in the same breath, advocate the hoarding of guns and ammunition in the family home, yet stand back and watch as Christ is removed from every fabric of their society - and then vilify someone who stands up and asks "Why are we doing this?" ?
Is it only folk from outside your country who can see the correlation between the massive numbers of homocides by shooting and the worship of guns?
How can you keep a gun in a suburban home when having a gun in the home makes it nearly three times more likely that you or someone you care about will be murdered by a family member or intimate partner. (Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home, Arthur L. Kellermann, MD, MPH; Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH; et al, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 329, No. 15, October 7, 1993, pp. 1084-1091.)
Are you aware that nearly 30,000 homicides were firearm related in 2000 in the USA?
And that there were almost 120,000 non-fatal firearm assults in the same year?
What's the deal?
Kahunapule Michael P. Johnson Servant of Jesus Christ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://eBible.org/mpj/
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