I understand that, if you and female friends must travel through the neighborhood surrounding the campus and that neighborhood is full of sketchy people, there's little you can do about that.

However, your 30 minute walk has now turned in to a 40 minute walk and you have completely ignored the concept of riding a bicycle. I used to commute about 3.5 miles each way on a bike and I could make it from door to door in under 15 minutes if I hustled. Granted, it took me a while to drop that time down but it was a great part of being in shape.

Again, there may be reasons that moving is out of the question but time spent walking there and back should not be a major one.

Again, I think you are taking an understandable position. I think, in many cases, your concept that threatening a criminal who originally did not necessarily mean you bodily harm (aka was just looking to rob you of wealth) may institute a "fight or flight" response from them that leads to violence where none might have otherwise occurred.

However, in risk management you have to look both at the probability of a negative outcome and the impact of the negative outcomes.

This goes back to treating gun ownership like a type of insurance, a tool to hopefully help ameliorate a potentially horrible situation.

For instance, a guy breaks in to your house in the middle of the night and is armed. He may or may not be looking to rape your wife and slit your throat to make a lamp out of your skin. He may or may not just be looking to sleep off his meth-addled buzz on your couch. He may or may not be looking to rob you of your worldly possessions.

I believe this is an instance where "plan for the worst and hope for the best" is the most prudent course.

I also believe everyone should have at least a $1 million umbrella personal liability policy (you don't have to have a million bucks to get sued for a million bucks), copies of living will and health care surrogate forms kept with a trustworthy source, and other risk management procedures in place in all things they do. For instance, I always stand a few feet back from the curb when waiting for a walk signal rather than standing a few inches from traffic.

Etcetera, etcetera. Other people will decide on their level of comfort in terms of trying to plan for and potentially mitigate what are admittedly low probability disasters.


Which reminds me: I need to back up some computer pictures and update my fire and waterproof storage options. :)

BULL.

When you carry, you are carrying to protect yourself and those in your immediate care. Period.

Ever heard of undercover cops getting killed by uniformed cops while making an arrest? How do you know the woman wrestling on the ground with the hairy strong man (while yelling "help - RAPE!") isn't an undercover cop making an arrest? Are you willing to go to jail (killing a cop) to save her? How do you know who is the assailant and who is the victim? What if the victim has turned the table on the assailant and now is the one armed and the assailant is the one on the ground yelling "help!."

Obviously there will be situations where saving other people coincides with your interest in saving yourself. However, that gun on your hip is not there to fulfill your hero complex.

This is not an attack on you Scary, I am just trying to save others from making a very costly mistake. Unless you KNOW what is going on, you get yourself to a safe distance and call 911 and wait for the uniformed police to arrive.

samnavy corrected me on this a few posts back. I always thought there was a duty to act if you were armed.

That 2 Million number is an average reported number, as in most of these cases the law never gets involved. The situation simply de-escalates, and everyone goes home. I believe the wording of the survey question is along the lines of, "Have you or do you know anyone who has in the past year used a firearm to deter a crime?" Anti-gunners figure that there's massive over-reporting, and degrade the number to around 500k. Pro-gunners figure that there's massive under-reporting, and will inflate it up to 4 Million.

That might be hard to understand, but there are over 200,000 cases of rape every year. There were 800,000 cases of aggravated assault in 2009. If firearms were deterring an equal number of these crimes from happening, that'd be 1 Million crimes deterred, not counting robbery, kidnapping, larceny or the thousands of other horrid crimes that happen in this country.

I think one thing some here are overlooking (or ignoring), is the fact that some people out there will mess you up (or kill) for simply being where they don't want you.

I lived outside of DC years back. My roommate and I were looking to go out on the town in the Georgetown area. For those that don't know, Georgetown is a ritzy section of bars surrounded by some of the worst crime area in the country. Murder capitol and all that.

Anyway, being new to the area, we got lost. In trying to turn around, we found ourselves in an alley. The headlights showed a large goup of young males, who were apparently not too keen on us being there. Lots of shouting. They started running towards us. Just as I started backing out, another group ran up to the rear of the car. No idea where they came from. Several started pounding on the back of the car.

Without any further hesitation, I floored it. I hit several, one hard enough to dent the bumper on a 1794 Duster, as we discovered later. Tires squealing, I made it around the corner and sped off. There is no dobt in my mind that two young white guys would have been beaten and robbed at the very least had we stuck around.

I worried for days afterwards about hitting someone, but nothing ever came of it. Gangs do not tend to go to the police.

1794 Dusters are bad ass!!

You should wait until he tells the rest of the story, where they get the car pushed by a train to 88 miles per hour. :bowrofl:

I work out on the road and end up in a lot of gas stations and convenience stores, sometimes in bad areas. One day I was in one within a bad neighborhood that was near a customer's jobsite. The next day a thug robbed it and shot a clerk and a customer. One of them died. I recognized the store on the news. That was ~12yrs ago. I already had guns but I applied for my concealed permit shortly after that. I pray I'll never need to use it.

I try like hell to avoid shady and quarrelsome people.

Those women must have been super glad they didn't have a gun on them, because then the criminal would have taken violent action against them... DaveC can tell you all about it.

So the number is soft, no surprise, but the absolute magnitude isn't important. It's a question of the likelihood that any given individual.... oh never mind. I've made my point.

Statistically I don't need to wear seatbelts. (Only .02% of cars are involved in accidents per year.)
Statistically I don't need to wear a condom. (There is only a 15-25% chance of getting pregnant in a single ovulatory cycle)
Statistically I'll live until I'm 78.7 years old. (CIA World Factbook)
But only if I don't get cancer (1:2 people get cancer at some point in their life)
Or get murdered (1:133 chance)
Statistically you'll be in 192 mass shootings (or struck by lightning 192 times, same odds) before you win the lottery (1:135 million compared to 1:700k) [but don't tell that to the lottery winners, statistically they don't exist]{especially after being struck by lightning 192 times}

Statistically, if I was a woman, I wouldn't get raped (1:4)

Statistically I'll never be violently accosted by a stranger. But statistics won't save my life if I am. No one ever says that they're glad that statistics were on their side.

Evidently, I haven't made my point.

Are you interested in me trying to explain it, or do you just want to try to make me look silly? I don't really care either way...

I think your point was made clear based on the assumptions you made. Most people here just disagree with your base assumptions which therefore results in them discrediting your entire argument.

You and Sam are really not that far apart you just have this assertion that the presence of a gun causes more harm than good. You both think a gun should not be the first thing you do to escape or take control of a dangerous situation. The difference is Sam thinks it is the last measure you should use where as you think it is a measure that should never be employed.

My point to you is that if you plan on living on odds, statistics, and chances, that there is a good chance you'll do just fine. Unless you don't. You could just as easily land on one extreme of the bell curve as the middle.

I would rather hedge my bets and expect and plan for the worst of any possible outcome. When I see a street urchin approach me on the sidewalk I don't keep my head down and think, "This guy will keep on walking and leave me alone." I think, "Baggy pants, no clear weapons, not fingering his pockets, not all twacked out and picked up, just a little dirty. Tall and scrawny, has more reach than me. Softened facial features (not setting jaw or furrowing eyebrows), probably going to ask me for change." Then I say "Hello," before he gets within my bubble, so he's on the spot to either close the gap, respond in kind, or say what he wants to say. So far I've never been attacked or mugged, but that doesn't mean it will never happen.

Buy a gun and keep it in your home.

I wouldn't want to carry a weapon on me. I'm rather unpredictable in my decision making when I'm confronted by a stranger and I may make a wrong decision if it came down to it.

Really, 18psi had it dead right.

+1 to racking the shotgun being enough to scare them off. I hope that's all I ever have to do with mine.

No.

The intruder might try to harm the homeowner, but it would absolutely not be justified.

If you're in a position to where you need to scare someone away you'd better already have the shotgun locked and loaded. All that racking the slide does is give away your position and increase your chances of short stroking the shotgun and NOT HAVING A ROUND IN THE CHAMBER.

If you really want to scare the bad guy, get a bead on him and then make your presence known. If he starts to charge you, blast him. If he slowly starts slinking away, let him leave and call the cops.

Now imagine how a situation could end with you racking an empty shotgun, and not actually loading a round if he decides to charge.... :td:

^-- This...


Racking the action on a firearm in a defensive situation is a great way to get shot at, wastes precious time and adds way too many unknown variables to the situation.


Scott posted in one of the other gun related threads this blog written by a firearms instructor who teaches CCW classes. Seems like every CCW instructor I know always has at least one person per class come in with the attitude that they're going to carry their personal defense firearm without a round in the chamber because it's "safer" in their mind. The author of this blog went into great detail about his method of removing that terrible mind set from inexperienced people and it was really quite simple. Using inert practice firearms and plastic knives he setup different scenarios that could play out resulting in use of deadly force for personal defense. Every one he setup with a defense firearm in a loaded but no round chambered carry position resulted in the student dead. All of them. Same thing goes for a Single action only style handgun (1911 design, for example) which will _ONLY_ fire if the hammer has been cocked first. Don't think you're going to be guaranteed safety in a defense situation walking around with a 1911 in "Condition 2 / 3" with the idea that "I'll cock the hammer to show I mean business." That garbage belongs where it came from, hollywood. Speaking of hollywood every time someone produces a Glock or similar striker fired firearm in a movie and you hear a distinct "hammer cocking" sound I want to punch that directors face in.

The choice is ultimately yours what you do in that situation, and while I'm NOT an expert by any means on the subject of defense or firearms in general, I would HIGHLY recommend you reconsider your strategy.

Thanks for the tactics lesson, citizen.

Elesjuan, you and Mr. Scary Man are reading into my post a little too much. I'm not going to get right up on the guy and THEN load, I simply would hope that the act of racking it from inside my bedroom before clearing the house would be enough to scare off the intruder. If it isn't, then we go from there.

Hate to blow my own horn, but I have a bit of practice in room clearing.