+1
You guys are right, it's best if no one does anything to prevent crime. It's best if no one takes any personal risk to benefit others. It's best that this guy destroyed an innocent girls life, and got away scott free to enjoy the rest of his own life with 2 hands. It's best if we all cower in our homes and wait for the government to protect us.
I'm done arguing when all you do is put words in my mouth to argue your points. Then act like you know what life in my state is like, even after I've shown you that we are #2 in the nation for firearm deaths per capita. Do you know what per capita means? Let me break it down:
In Alaska, out of every 100,000 people, 20 will die from firearms
In California, out of every 100,000 people, 9.8 will die from firearms (less than half, if the math is too confusing)
In New Jersey, out of every 100,00 people, 4.9 will die from firearms (less than one quarter, math whiz)
I give up, you obviously know more about me and my state than I do myself. We don't have guns because we all use harpoons to hunt whales. Gang violence up here means getting trampled by a herd of caribou. We can't use fireworks or explosives because it's too cold for fire to exist. If ignorance is bliss you must be very happy.
Cliff, here's the thing - you can make statistics speak for you anyway you'd like, if you know how to manipulate the data you're using and the means of conveying that data.
California may have more deaths "per capita" but that takes into account Beverly Hills
and the ghettos of Sacramento or Los Angelos. Now if you were to break the statistics down even further, don't you think that a "bad neighborhood" in California might just have a wee bit more deaths from firearms than in Alaska? Its concentrated where a certain group of people live.
Now you broke those statistics down to show New Jersey as having the lowest deaths per capita, yet Camden, NJ has been in the "Top 5 Worst Cities in America" list for years running now. It was the murder capital of the nation a few years ago. Compton is alway up in the Top 10 as well.
See how I can make statistics speak for me any which way I please?
You cannot possibly think that Alaska is as dangerous to live as a bad urban area and if you are, you really haven't lived here before. I've lived out in the hills, in the boondocks without electricity on the side of a mountain out in Montana. I could tell you rural life back in my hometown is far safer than where I am down by Trenton, NJ and Camden, NJ.
With all that said, your argument of you putting someone under citizen's arrest was in the ideal world that you clearly don't believe we live in. If you pulled a gun on an armed citizen, you better believe if they could get their weapon out, they're going to pull the gun on you as well.
I stick to my original argument about Steve's flawed logic and that I would have put 2 between his eyes, if he shot one of my friends and then ask questions later, much in he same manner that he would have shot my friend, in the first place.
You're an intelligent guy, but the arguments you use for a pro gun stance are foolish. A gun would not have helped here. One person, like a police officer who is a 'respected' figure of authority that people will respond to much differently than a plain clothed civilian, with a gun may have helped the situation. Multiple people baring arms, certainly would not be an ideal situation and could turn out to be a shoot out at the canal.
Once again, I'm not against guns, I'm against stupid people using and carrying guns. People like Steve that use a gun as a safety blanket and crutch because although they put on a hard outside but are really afraid that the world is going to hand their ass to them.
I hypothesize if Steve was 6'6, 280lbs and jacked and he hadn't been picked on in his childhood, he probably would view his safety much differently because he would have had the luxury of a different viewpoint. I know that I might feel tough on the mean streets of where ever I'm walking, as I'm walking through South Philadelphia in the wee hours of the morning, I have a different sort of tension than I'm accustomed.