Quote from: Cvalda on Feb 18, 2014, 03:51:16 PM
I've been assaulted twice, and almost attacked and raped on a street corner once.
Do I feel paranoid enough to own a gun? No.
Also, preeeettyyy sure most burglaries occur when you are not home -- so the odds of you ever going all vigilante on some masked bandit are pretty low.
My mom had a stalker and none of us really knew how serious it could be. After months and months of this dude crawling on top of stuff to look into our windows and the police not doing anything about it (it snowed once and this guy had even grown so confident about not getting caught or was a dumbass and had tracks going right back to the house he was staying at and it somehow didn't warrant a police investigation) my dad had enough.
Sit under the window for an hour waiting for the guy to try and catch a peep of the room my mom was in and when he did and she saw him she screamed, my dad busted the window out and the guy shit himself running away after having a .357 pointed at his head.
My dad caught full sight of the guy called the police (it was of course the guy whose tracks led back to this other persons house he was staying with) told them if they didn't come over he was going to beat this kids ass and finally the police opened up an investigation so the people he was staying with kicked him out and he moved somewhere else. Everytime he saw my dad he'd freak the f**k out.
I don't think most people actually get guns to shoot anything with but more as a deterrent. After this fool had a weapon pointed at his head things de-escalated very quickly. I was like 9 when this all went down so I'm not the macho one in this story because had I been older the guy would've shit himself in fear by my presence alone.
Personally of the ones I've owned I've only ever got them to shoot, I had no self defense plans with them. All the ones I buy in Lexington end up back in Hopkinsville so I can shoot them at the range. Might have some subconscious desire to remain proficient since you only get to shoot once a year in the guard unless your about to deploy.
My sister is also a hippy and won't take any guns (she will shoot them but not own one), so I bought her a whole bunch of tasers and mace cannons instead. It was a good idea I thought because she's smallish but she once shot the mace cannon and I was beside her and the stuff blew into my face.
Much pain. But at least they work.
Quote from: Vickers on Feb 18, 2014, 06:02:37 PM
I've been mugged at knife point, had one home broken into and another attempted break-in at a different house while I was home.
I don't own a gun. Sure, with not having any children around, I would feel more at ease about owning a gun. But I still can't bring myself to getting one. I would feel uneasy.
I just think many gun owners (many... not all) are careless and access to their guns are easy for others. And in many school shooting incidents abroad, the children had access to guns at home.
People are careless. Dudes were shooting high powered hunting rifles off the road one time in Hopkinsville, they were like 300 yards away and thought they were safe about hitting anything near the road. They were wrong and popped a lady in the arm. I'm all for tougher restrictions on giving them out to people. Better background checks, mandatory classes, I wouldn't even mind being forced to buy one of those digital thumbprint lockers that only open for you so kids couldn't tamper with them while you were away.
