otasan56
Member
I'll give up my right to shoot burglars in the forehead. I'll aim for the sternum, instead.
I'll give up my right to shoot burglars in the forehead. I'll aim for the sternum, instead.
Of course it's used. It was used to coerce someone by the threat of deadly force into giving up something which the taker wasn't legally entitled to seize.Is armed robbery really 'using' the gun if it's only brandished?
By your "logic", if that same robber tries to rob me, I pull my firearm and he flees, I HAVEN'T defended myself because I didn't SHOOT him.
For the purposes of the law, that is in many places indeed an "armed" robbery. You are using the threat of deadly force with a weapon (whether it's really a weapon, or even present) in order to forcibly seize something to which you have no legal claim. The victim only needs a reasonable belief that the alternative to submission is deadly force inflicted with a weapon.While you're entirely correct in saying that brandishing a firearm is a means of using it to coerce a victim, I think it is also important to point out that cases where a firearm is simulated, and cases where a fake gun is used, are also categorized as an "armed robbery" in most crime stats.
By observation, the lion's share of anti-gun "statistics" are predicated on false or irrelevant premises.Anyway, sorry if I started dragging this thread on a tangent. I've just been confronted with a lot of BS statistics from the anti-gun crowd lately, and I like to take any opportunity that I can to show how flawed their logic is.
By observation, the lion's share of anti-gun "statistics" are predicated on false or irrelevant premises.
Kellerman for instance, relies on the dubious premise that one has not actually defended oneself with a firearm unless somebody gets SHOT.
Strangely, they do not apply the same "principle" to chemical sprays and the martial arts. Hence, their demand that somebody get shot and DIE for a firearm to be used in self-defense, without a corresponding demand that someone be choked or beaten to death when the martial arts are used. Likewise, they don't demand that people use sarin nerve gas instead of pepper spray, even though pepper spray doesn't usually kill.
They don't compare apples and oranges. They compare apples and squid. But then that's what a pathological liar WOULD do, ISN'T it?
The next election will be interesting.
The next election will be interesting.
The next election is 2 years away. The American public has a VERY short memory.
The next election is 2 years away. The American public has a VERY short memory.
If any kind of gun control legislation gets passed next year, the voting public will do the same thing about it in the 2014 elections as they did in the 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002 elections after the original AWB passed. In other words - nothing.
The only reason there was a ground swell reaction in 1994 was because the AWB was passed in September and the elections were just over a month away. No time for any other major issues to catch their attention.