This is tricky.
You see, I agree with some of your points, and some of his. I'm against public-carry like you. I'm in favour of gun-club ownership like you.

Poor logic of me, I know; and a lazy quote at best. I meant to refer to the ethics rather than the skill. The army recruits from the general public, the same subset of people deemed unreliable for private ownership. But just becasue they're being paid to carry arms does not imbue them with extra mental stability. If it's too dangerous to let someone shoot inanimate objects or vermin, how will they cope with taking another persons life? My argument here is as much for better forces "after-care" as it is for letting people plink targets.

I didn't mean to suggest *our* troops would do things like steal food; even though there are some shocking lapses in discipline in the present day (I'm sure no-one was directly ordered to bully new recruits to death in Deepcut barracks, or abuse prisoners in Iraq; but it happened). The americans had historical problems with an *external* military force, not their own.

edit: And as an aside, police "cover" is an illsuion, just like any other service. You can move in additional help from surrounding areas, but create enough demand and any service will fail.

The miner's strike drew in cover from nationwide and it still wasn't enough to keep complete order; and you can't keep that level of deployment up for long without leaving yourself short elsewhere. I'd like to know the real crime stats from when cover is stretched thin. Even peaceful events place a heavy demand on finite resources (eg. football matches), and if an officer is pulling O/T to cover one, then in theory they're unavailable again until rested.

But I'm getting distracted now, from my original point: If someone breaks onto my house, possibly carrying a weapon, definitely making a deliberate choice to do wrong; why are my options currently limited: Barricading myself away / asking them politely to leave / getting savagely beaten with a claw hammer? Why can't I hold them, (after training and certification) at gunpoint, until officers can arrive to apprehend the criminal?
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Mon 9 Feb 2009, 17:30, 1 reply)

"If someone breaks onto my house".

Examine someone's motives for doing this for just a moment. Usually, someone will break into another person's house to steal posessions. A person doing this will have no reason to become violent unless threatened, with violence or capture. Why would you WANT to prompt an intruder into violence for the sake of your posessions? Announce your presence and let them flee. Let them rob you if they don't. Is your life so worthless that you'll risk it for insured goods, or for your pride, or for a worthless principle that you shouldn't be robbed? If you're going to risk your life for something, do it for fun, or for something much more worthwhile than a telly and a laptop!

Getting savagely beaten with a claw hammer? This brings up the other issue here; an unrealistic fear that someone will break into your house for the purpose of deliberately harming/killing you and your family. Psychopaths of that variety are so very, very rare. And where they do occur, don't you think that someone who has planned the attack in advance is going to have the upper hand no matter how much money you spend on guns? You're going to be asleep in your bed, after all, likely until it's too late. The chances of someone randomly picking your home to commit murders just for kicks? Has it ever happened to ANYONE you've ever known, even a friend of a friend of a friend?

Filling your home with guns, putting deadly weapons in close proximity to yourself and your family, exposing yourselves to great risk, just to protect yourself against an extremely unlikely risk?

How about you douse yourself and your family in petrol and walk around with lit matches, so you're ready to protect yourself against the cold in the event of a sudden global ice age? Because that's just as sensible.
(Musuko, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 16:55, closed)