re: #23 Renaissance_Man

Maybe they can be. They weren’t in the ones above.

It’s not maybe. There are clearly some circumstances where the citizen having the gun is actually useful. If they’re highly-trained and responsible. A diamond-courier, for example, who has reason to believe he might be attacked at some point, trains heavily with his gun for actual tactical use. Don’t go so far in exploding the myth of the gun you create the myth of the anti-gun.

Seriously? Firing at criminals who are running away is what passes for ‘common sense gun use’?

His stated reason was that the guy was pointing the gun at him. The guy hadn’t fired yet, but he might have. Asking people to simply stand there when they have a gun pointed at them is silly. Moreover, it actually is a good gun control argument: guns are a lethal threat. That’s what they are. Gun owners are people walking around with the very, very easy ability to rapidly kill other people, and we want to treat that seriously.

You cannot simultaneously treat the gun in the man’s hand as a danger and threat to all and sundry and the one in the criminal’s hand as to be ignored.

I doubt it was the right call to shoot at the guy, but that’s not an argument for this poor shit-scared dude who was facing the very real possibility of himself and his daughter being murdered. At least, it’s an argument that if he had that gun he should have been very well-trained in its use. At most, it’s a strong argument for getting the gun out of the criminal’s hands, which would require much heavier regulation than we have now.