Finally!

A just decision by the Supreme Court.

The right to keep and bear arms, is an individual right, without regard to any type of membership in any militia.

What say you gun grabbers now?

magprob

They usually try to escape from the cops before confronting them. They know the cops ain't messed up about putting a bullit in their butt. The minute you pull a gun on an armed criminal, the game changes completely.

WVHiflyer

Au contrare... not only many studies but interviews with criminals say just the opposite. Seems your info is coming from flawed sources....

ScottGem

Citations?

tomder55

Here is the Brady Campaign opinion on 'Heller'. Although they disagree with the decision they find a big positive in the ruling :

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

Wildsporty

Idaho is getting it right.......this is how we feel about gun ownership in Idaho...

Gun Control in Greenleaf, Idaho
17 January, 2007 (11:26) | News No Responses

From: The New York Times

Last month, Greenleaf adopted Ordinance 208, calling for its citizens to own guns and keep them ready in their homes in case of emergency. This is exactly the kind of “Gun Control” legislation that is needed across America! Sure, these ordinances and statutes are largely symbolic, those that do not want to own a gun are not fined or otherwise punished. But it does send a strong message throughout the community. Criminal activity is not tolerated here and we are ready to protect ourselves and the community.

Greenleaf is following in the footsteps of Kennesaw, Ga., which in 1982 passed a mandatory gun ownership law in response to a handgun ban passed in Morton Grove, Ill. Kennesaw’s crime dropped sharply, while Morton Grove’s did not.

I hope to see more Idaho towns adopt measures like this. It costs the local government nothing to implement, and there is no real enforcement necessary. But the message that is sent by such laws is priceless. If the crime rate in Kennesaw, GA dropped after their “mandatory” ownership law, it is a safe bet that it will work anywhere it is implemented. Looks like it is time to make some phone calls and write a few letters…

Shirley

excon

Hello W:

I think it's fine for gun enthusiasts to own guns. That's what the Constitution is all about. I think it's NUTS to require people to have guns who DON'T want them - absolutely, incontrovertibly, NUTS.

excon

WVHiflyer

Here's one...and you can pull it up and check his references.

Guns and Violence: A Summary of the Field
This article is copyrighted. It was provided by the author, criminologist Gary Kleck, and is distributed with the permission of the author. It can be uploaded to other BBSs as long as it is not altered, and it may be cited as long as credit is given.

Gary Kleck
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Florida State University
Tallahassee, Florida 32312
Prepared for delivery at the 1991 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, The Washington Hilton, August 29
through September 1, 1991. Copyright by the
American Political Science Association.


The fact that armed victims can effectively disrupt crimes suggests that widespread civilian gun ownership might also deter some criminals from attempting crimes in the first place. There probably will never be definitive evidence on this deterrence question, since it revolves around the issue of how many crimes do not occur because of victim gun ownership. However, scattered evidence is consistent with a deterrence hypothesis. In prison surveys criminals report that they have refrained from committing crimes because they thought a victim might have a gun. "Natural experiments" indicate that rates of "gun deterrable" crimes have declined after various highly publicized incidents related to victim gun use, including gun training programs, incidents of defensive gun use, and passage of a law which required household gun ownership. Widespread gun ownership may also deter burglars from entering occupied homes, reducing confrontations with residents, and thereby reducing deaths and injuries. U.S. burglars are far less likely to enter occupied premises than burglars in nations with lower gun ownership.

.... Victim gun use is associated with lower rates of assault or robbery victim injury and lower rates of robbery completion than any other defensive action or doing nothing to resist. Serious predatory criminals perceive a risk from victim gun use which is roughly comparable to that of criminal justice system actions, and this perception may influence their criminal behavior in socially desirable ways.

Rates of commercial robbery, residential burglary injury, and rape might be still higher than their already high levels were it not for the dangerousness of the prospective victim population. Gun ownership among prospective victims may well have as large a crime-inhibiting effect as any crime-generating effects of gun possession among prospective criminals. This could account for the failure of researchers to find a significant net relationship between rates of crime like homicide and robbery, and measures of general gun ownership - the two effects may roughly cancel each other out.

...If gun possession among prospective victims tends to reduce violence, then reducing such gun possession is not, in and of itself, a social good.

----

BTW - I must have missed the posts with your citations. What's the #s?

ScottGem

And I quote: "There probably will never be definitive evidence on this deterrence question".

This suggests that my sources are not flawed, but rather that there are different schools of thought on the issue.

What I find most interesting about Kleck's article is how vague and nebulous it is. He tries very hard to create an impression that gun ownership is a deterrant, while admitting it really can't be proven. This leads me to wonder what his bias may be.

But I will clarify my position a bit. I said in an earlier post that criminals will generally take the path of least resistance. If they suspect one victim is armed and another isn't, its clear who they will go after. And of course that's supported by prison surveys.

But what we are talking about here is a generally armed populace. Where the likelihood of everyone or at least a large percentage of citizens are armed. In that case there is no path of least resistance. The playing field has been leveled. In such an instance, the deterrance factor is now removed because the criminal has only the choice of commit the crime or not. And if they were not deterred by the other dangers of committing crimes, the probablity of coming up against an armed victim is not going to deter them either.

NeedKarma

I'm still scared sh*tless of the violence in the US. I restrict my travel there to certain safe-ish areas.

tomder55

I don't think deterence is a big factor here. It is the fundamental right of people to defend themselves from creeps who will prey on them or governments who would .