When the playing field is level, the cowards flee.

Would make a good ad for the NRA.

And the ad should read: despite this apparent situation, the man is LUCKY, as studies (including the CDC, before the NRA/GOP stopped them from collecting gun data) show that a gun in the home is more likely to be used against the owner or a loved one than in self defense.

May this man and his loved ones continue to be so lucky.

I guess killing some grass was a good move, but an apprehension would have been better. Orchids to the defender

Luck favors the prepared, statistically.

>Luck favors the prepared, statistically.

If, by "prepared" you mean homes with guns, then perhaps.

As does the actual statistics about those guns being used in assaults, domestic violence, murder, accidental shootings and suicides.

As well as being stolen. Or stolen, then used on the homeowner.

Or, as Ted calls it: "luck".

If my home is being invaded by people who wish to cause me harm, I'd rather defend myself with a loaded weapon that I'm trained to use over statistics.

By the way, a recent article (after the Sandy Hook shootings) said people are infinitely better off fighting back or running away than being passive and hoping you will be left alone. You won't.

Is anyone else suspicious about this whole scenario? How was it that this victim was known to have guns & money?

"If my home is being invaded by people who wish to cause me harm, I'd rather defend myself with a loaded weapon that I'm trained to use over statistics."

"Statistics" of suicide by gun, gun related domestic violence, accidental shootings and murder are real, far more real than the perceived defensive value of a gun around the house, Pogo. How many times has your home been invaded?

"In the U.S. for 2010, there were 31,513 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 19,308; Homicide 11,015; Accident 600. This makes firearms injuries one of the top ten causes of death in the U.S. The number of firearms-related injuries in the U.S., both fatal and non-fatal, increased through 1993, declined to 1999, and has remained relatively constant since. However, firearms injuries remain a leading cause of death in the U.S., particularly among youth (CDC, 2001)"

Those 600 are really dead, not merely a statistic about accidental gun death.

As are the 4,364 gun deaths since Sandy Hook.

4,364 dead.

684 women

496 Californians

86 children

Eighty Six children since Sandy Hook, if you believe Pogo, just "statistics".

attribution fail, should have ended: "(CDC, 2001) (Sherry et al, 2012)."

CDC studies are at cdc.gov

Quote above is from Web Link

I don't dispute your numbers - in fact, they help make a point (which I'll do in a moment). But I stand on my statement: "IF MY HOME IS BEING INVADED BY PEOPLE WHO WISH TO CAUSE ME HARM [EMPHASIS ADDED], I'd rather defend myself with a loaded weapon that I'm trained to use over statistics." I was specifically referring to a home invasion. And yes, it has actually happened to me my family, not that it's relevant.

But with all this outcry for gun control, your statistics make a very interesting point. The number of Sandy Hooks is extraordinarily rare. The reason we remember Connecticut school and Colorado movie theater shootings is that they are fortunately, in fact, so rare. In fact, there have been a total of 62 "mass shootings" since 1982. That's an average of about 2 per year - a number that hasn't changed much in a couple of centuries.

As your statistics reveal, the vast number of deaths is the result of suicide. And as for the others, I recently read an article that something like 80% of the other deaths (homicides) are gang-on-gang related and no one believes gun control will have any impact on those.

No, I'm not against gun control as long as it's smart and targets the big problem (which isn't law abiding citizens, it's irrational people). So while every death is tragic in its own way, I'm not one of those who says "if it saves just one life..." because that attitude ignores the lives the status quo may, in fact, protect.

Like this guy in East Palo Alto to name just one.

Well said POGO. Well said.

POGO - I am venturing to guess that you're really NOT much like this guy in EPA, except for this situation! I'd love to know if all of his guns were legal & registered. I'm not saying this to be anti-gun, it's because I've lived her awhile now...

Hmmmm -

You are probably correct. I agree that there is a lot more to this story, especially as it relates to guns.

But the theme of this story is that a guy responded to intruders by firing back. His action seemed to work because this isn't a story about an EPA guy killed by intruders.

Indeed, POGO. There are so many of these stories which end tragically (either because someone is armed or the wrong ones are armed or someone's a total amateur w/a firearm, or the bad guys are incredibly ruthless) & I think I'm relieved that this isn't one of them. I say "think" because I'm not convinced the target was a good guy. So it may not even have happened if he wasn't known to have money AND guns.

I knew a good guy in EPA who put the word out that he was well-armed (legally) when he learned about the young gang members on his street. It served him well for many years.

This is an area where the lower income & the wealthy may have overlap: being targeted by bad guys for home invasions.

People who purhase fire arms, learn how to use and clean them, regularly go to the fire range to keep their proficiency high, and take the NRA safety course have a much better chance of surviving an armed intrusion than some silly liberal who will call 911 and be long dead before the police arrive.

How many 'good' gun owners, trained and everything, use booze or drugs (prescribed or otherwise)? How many have a bad day, an argument with someone they love? How many just THINK they're secure? Want to know how many trained folk discharge weapons by accident, just while cleaning the weapon?

If you have a gun in the home you are much more likely to have it used on you or someone you love, whether you are an 'expert' or not.

How many examples do you want?

- "A gun safety instructor may face charges of discharging a firearm within Stillwater city limits after he accidentally fired a 1911 Colt 45 handgun inside Salem Lutheran School just prior to teaching a class."

- "Lincoln Police said the 52-year-old was taking a concealed carry class, when he went to put the .22 caliber gun in a holster on his hip and it went off."

- "The Grayson County Sheriff's Office is investigating a Concealed Handgun License instructor, after they say a man was accidentally shot over the weekend during a class... The bullet missed his heart by 3 inches and now the instructor could be facing criminal charges...
They say a bullet hit a Sadler man in his twenties while he was fishing in a pond about 100 yards away from the gun class."

The above are newspaper reports from a month ago, there have been many since.

There's hundreds of stupid, silly, ironic, humorous, and of course, tragic examples just this year, of supposed safe gun owners killing themselves or someone they love.

Search 'gunfail' and any number of words, such as NRA certified, child, parent, accident, safety, discharge, etc...

Stay lucky, EPA man in story, and menlo observer. Your life, or a loved one's, or a neighbor, depend on it.

Even a fisherman a football field away.

well, already had this one pulled up, so here ya go... file under: "hubris"?

or "irony"?

or just "lucky"?

"April 30, 2013 10:00 am • (6) Comments

A shooting accident sent a local firearms instructor to the hospital with injuries to his left hand.

Fred Petersen, 66, of rural Stockton was showing his wife a .38 Special handgun Thursday morning in their home, Winona County Sheriff Dave Brand said.

Brand said Petersen had cleaned the pistol and was putting it into a holster when Petersen’s wife asked him whether it was possible to pull the trigger when the weapon was holstered.

In attempting to answer that question, Petersen triggered the action while holding the gun and holster in his left hand, accidentally firing a shot. The slug struck his left index finger between the first and second joint, damaging the bone, Brand said.

Petersen received initial treatment at Winona Health and then was transferred to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester for a successful surgery to repair the finger, Brand said.

“The gun was pointed in a safe direction,” Petersen said Monday, “but my finger was not in a good spot.”

Petersen is an NRA-certified instructor for classes required to qualify for a Minnesota concealed-carry handgun permit."

google is so wonderful... here's a gun nut who planned to attend a gun rally... well, you can guess...

"NRA instructor Eugene Kenny would have joined his fellow gun-rights supporters at the state Capitol Wednesday—if he hadn’t accidentally shot himself in the foot.

...

Web Link

Wearing an NRA hooded sweatshirt, he had his left foot in a cast because he accidentally shot a bullet last week while cleaning his Glock handgun.

“I usually always cock it back and it usually ejects a shell that’s in the chamber,” he recalled. “You pull the trigger to release the slide ... This time there was a cartridge in there. And BANG! Hit my ankle.”

A self-described “stickler about safety...”

Bang.

Nice sweatshirt, though... the nurses must have had a pretty good laugh.

Not what this thread is about, but your point that there are stupid people is well taken. Dumb people drive while texting with their cell phones, suicidal people overdosing on prescription drugs, insane people drinking and doing all sorts of things.

But we don't outlaw them, we regulate them.

Yes, there are hundreds of dumb gun accidents a year by stupid or careless people. But did you know that eleven teens die everyday while texting and driving? That's 4,000 kids EVERY YEAR.

No, it's not the point of this thread either, but it does support your assertion that stupid people do stupid things. Apparently guns aren't even near the worst.

Pogo: Didn't look to me like the post was about stupid people, but a post about well qualified gun users (instructors!) It looked like a response to Menlo Observer, who claimed "People who purhase fire arms, learn how to use and clean them, regularly go to the fire range to keep their proficiency high, and take the NRA safety course have a much better chance of surviving..."

Yet Gary pointed out numerous instances taking place within the month, of gun instructors no less, in some cases teaching NRA certified courses, having accidentally shot innocent people or even themselves. In one case, while teaching an NRA class!

So much for the 'guns are totally safe in the right hands' meme.

As for 4k teenagers killing themselves while texting? Bringing back to topic, Farmville already listed the obvious response: in the US, in "2010, there were 31,513 deaths from firearms"

Pogo said: "But we don't outlaw them, we regulate them."

And we should regulate guns.

Walter:

guns are already well regulated in this country. The problem is the existing laws, which are extensive by the way, aren't enforced. In addition, some of the penalties for violating these laws are totally inadequate. In this state it is only a misdemeanor to carry a concealed gun (first offense). So, one essentially gets a pass if caught with a concealed handgun. When we get serious about enforcing existing gun laws and creating serious consequences for violating them we might make some progress.

One only need look at the progress made in drunk driving. It used to be no big deal, but gradually over time, the consequences have gotten more serious and enforcement has increased. DUI's are down. We need the same type of enforcement when it comes to gun laws. Outlawing them isn't going to do it.

These are great. All these ills are the fault of an inanimate object, and the people misusing them are not to blame at all. We talk about guns as if they are the problem, and we gloss right over mental illness, etc. We should be working hard to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill. Again...these are inanimate objects, not evil robots.

If you don't want one in your home and don't like them, I totally respect that. Please respect my choice to have one. If you don't want me telling you how to live your life, don't tell me how to live mine. That is the joy of being American.

I am with POGO...you can keep your studies...when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away. Glad this worked out and this poor guy didn't become another EPA crime statistic.

Yes, how many laws did the perpetrator of Sandy Hook or the Aurora movie theater break? I suppose we're just one really well written law away from utopia.

With regard to the number of people killed by firearms, as a prior poster pointed out, a full 20,000 of the 30,000 deaths were suicides. Not exactly the target of gun control. And of the remaining 10,000, 80% are gang-related. Also not the target of gun control.

My point is that there are bad things that we simply cannot prevent. And those well intended laws can have unintended consequences - usually imposed on the people you are not targeting.

Yes, stupid people do stupid things all the time, like shooting themselves or not locking up their guns. Stupid people also text while driving and kill themselves and others.

But people have also been saved because they had a gun in their home to protect their families. You can google that, too.

Betty Collins had received an early-morning phone call from her boyfriend on his way to work, warning her to be wary of a suspicious-looking shirtless man in the neighborhood. Shortly before 5 a.m., a shirtless man began kicking Collins’ front door. She rushed downstairs to the front door instead of staying upstairs and cowering under the sheets. What gave her this courage?

A 357.

So she rushed to the front door and shouted through it as loud as she could, “Get off my porch! I have a gun! I will shoot you!”

Know what the intruder did then? Apparently he thought she was bluffing and that he had nothing to fear, because he stayed right at the front door.

She repeated her warning one more time. When he still wouldn’t leave, Collins threw open the door and, as she so eloquently put it, “there he was, standing five inches from the barrel of a loaded .357.”

Betty could now exert her power over the man who tried to take away her sanctuary and so she did.

Betty told the young man, 31-year-old Kyle Caldwell, to get on the ground. So he got on his knees.

“No,” she said, “put your face in the dirt, and you’re gonna stay there!” Because the man had more understanding than most liberal Almanac readers that guns give the wielder the upper hand, he did exactly as she commanded him.

Betty Collins is alive because, plain and simple, the intruder was afraid of the gun.

Menlo Ob loves her anecdotal evidence. Sure, maybe the story about "Betty Collins" is true as reported, but so is the fact that Betty, and her fellow gun owners, are more likely to have that gun cause harm to her or a loved one.

For those that acknowledge facts (opposed to the ostriches "...you can keep your studies..."), here's a new set of data: Web Link (pdf)

Gun Deaths Outpace Motor Vehicle Deaths in 12 States and the
District of Columbia in 2010

"... gun deaths (including gun suicide, homicide, and fatal unintentional shootings) outpaced motor vehicle deaths in: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and Washington.
While the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is charged with
enforcing our nation’s limited gun laws, it has none of the health and safety regulatory powers afforded other federal agencies such as [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration].

As Dr. David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, notes in his 2004 book Private Guns, Public Health: “[T]he time Americans spend using their cars is orders of magnitudes greater than the time spent using their guns. It is probable that per hour of exposure, guns are far more dangerous. Moreover, we have lots of safety regulations concerning the manufacture of motor vehicles; there are virtually no safety regulations for domestic firearms manufacture.”"

Wonder if y'all that don't believe in numbers, studies, and facts n' stuff, do you still smoke? Not wear seat belts?