Law Abiding Mexicans Taking up Illegal Guns

[Trailrunner]

Once the word got out that you had a 'gun' in your house I'd give it a week before you didn't. Along with anything else that looked good at the moment.

[GeckoGretchen]

This thread on guns is a very sad commentary on the human character... If you add guns to any situation that is out of your control you are asking for deaths.... and those deaths will possibly be your own. Leave the guns for someone else. They don't belong in our hands. Once we add guns to our household supplies we are right smack dab into the Fear Factor. I would hate to have a gun in the kitchen drawer, under my bed, in the closet... that I had to think about every day, every time I heard a noise. Call me naive or ignorant, but this is not the way I want to spend my days... living in fear. And I would never want to find out that my gun was added to the collection of arms for a petty criminal and that it killed someone. You can never have too few guns in a society.

[solajijic]

Well I am not going to put a gun, real or pellet, in my house. But I know plenty of people who recently have legally purchased REAL guns and are waiting for them to arrive and then take the classes and arm themselves. Bad guys are just as likely to come in for the silver as they are for the gun. I just think there might be something to the presence of the gun which MIGHT cause them to think twice and move on.

As for GeckoGretchen's post about living in fear above, this is a quote from her post about guys fishing east of the pier "But just recently it has grown into a crowd and some of the crowd are not what we should be comfortable with. Does anyone know if we should be reporting this issue to the local police and if there is anything they can do to break up this situation before it gets worse?" She has apparently determined by the way they look and gather that they are undesirable...Hello Fear.

I can understand nationals trending to the acquistion of guns. However they know the rules and have the communicative network in the community to place fear where it needs to go. I don't have that advantage so a gun is not an option for me personally. But I do personally know of 5 new handguns in town so people are considering it an option.

[holdrja]

I think the best offence is a good defense -- perimeter walls, fences, barbed wire, wrought iron on top of walls, and electric fence. Motion sensors and heat-sensitive alarms. If they get through all that - then they are welcome to take what they want, better to lose possessions than my life.

Although, the sense of violation / depression etc is pretty bad, for a pretty long time after an incident like that. Stuff is stuff, and can be replaced or done without. Hard not to resist a thief, but am schooling myself to just say "take what you want". And then to follow up immediately with lakesidecrime and the MP. Hope it never happens..... our place looks difficult to break into now, hoping that's a good deterrent. BTW - although we have 2 dogs, I would say that dogs do not seem to be a real deterrent.

[redpepper]

This thread on guns is a very sad commentary on the human character... If you add guns to any situation that is out of your control you are asking for deaths.... and those deaths will possibly be your own. Leave the guns for someone else. They don't belong in our hands. Once we add guns to our household supplies we are right smack dab into the Fear Factor. I would hate to have a gun in the kitchen drawer, under my bed, in the closet... that I had to think about every day, every time I heard a noise. Call me naive or ignorant, but this is not the way I want to spend my days... living in fear. And I would never want to find out that my gun was added to the collection of arms for a petty criminal and that it killed someone. You can never have too few guns in a society.

Good point if you don't like guns.

[jaykay]

Perhaps some of the people reading this thread might be interested in how the Swiss do things. In that country, almost everyone serves in the military. Not like when we had the draft, just about everybody. When you finish your tour of duty and return to private life, you take your weapon. Breakins are almost unheard of. Maybe it's their culture, but I'd vote for the weapons. Here's a thought. Perhaps we have more than our share of breakins because (1) we have more stuff worth taking, and (2) the bad guys think we won't have guns. As to the effectiveness of having a weapon in the house, google something like "Armed citizens defending their home" and read up on real case histories. If a person has a strong feeling that he could not take another's life, no matter the circumstances, then he or she certainly should not own a firearm. If on the other hand, you would like to have an equalizer, then you could slide up to the country to the north and take one of the many good handgun courses that teach what my father used to call "social handgunning". I have three Dobermans, but if I really thought I might be attacked in my home, I'd want whatever advantage I could get. Turning the other cheek in this culture merely excites the bad guys. That's not a complaint, it's an observation. I don't tell someone else what is right, only what I'd do.

[carib]

This thread on guns is a very sad commentary on the human character... If you add guns to any situation that is out of your control you are asking for deaths.... and those deaths will possibly be your own. Leave the guns for someone else. They don't belong in our hands. Once we add guns to our household supplies we are right smack dab into the Fear Factor. I would hate to have a gun in the kitchen drawer, under my bed, in the closet... that I had to think about every day, every time I heard a noise. Call me naive or ignorant, but this is not the way I want to spend my days... living in fear. And I would never want to find out that my gun was added to the collection of arms for a petty criminal and that it killed someone. You can never have too few guns in a society.

Amen