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One was a pretty typical (for the time) drive by; someone in my after school youth group wore enough of the wrong color of clothing to catch the eye of the 'oth
by Diederich 8y ago
One was a pretty typical (for the time) drive by; someone in my after school youth group wore enough of the wrong color of clothing to catch the eye of the 'other' gang. We just had Saturday game night, and so were walking to Taco Bell for our unofficial after games social. As we stood at a corner waiting for a crosswalk to turn green, two or three gangbangers in a passing car opened fire with fully automatic machine pistols. I don't talk about the results.
Another time I was hanging out near a chain link fence chatting with a couple of friends when some other guys came by on the other side, talking shit. We talked some shit back, and they threatened to come back with a shotgun. We blew them off, ignored them and continued with our chat. Well, one of them did indeed come back with a shotgun. Fortunately the weapon was loaded with bird shot, so we were only slightly injured.
An 'amusing' story:
My grandpa, who raised me, along with my grandma, listened almost nightly to the police frequencies. We heard a helicopter circling above one night (a not uncommon thing), and the cops were talking about chasing an armed suspect on foot. The 'copter was circling one street over. It's easy to tell because their floodlight constantly points to whatever the action point is below.
Suddenly, from outside, we heard a fully automatic rifle fire a long burst. Seconds later, the 'copter reported that they were taking fire, and so were forced to orbit at a higher altitude.
Crime in Southern California in the 1980s was no fucking joke.
When my grandpa passed in 2003 (grandma in 2000), my dad sold that 850 square foot house for something $500k.
- solotronics 8y agoI grew up somewhere where many law abiding citizens carry pistols in public. What is your opinion on arming oneself for defense?
- EGreg 8y agoMy opinion is that it’s good in sparsely populated areas and becomes progressively worse as density increases due to the probability of random altercations getting out of hand.
- Diederich 8y agoI consider myself politically and culturally progressive, tempered with a wide but reasonable streak of pragmatic. So enough code phrases: I usually vote Democratic, even though I'm a strong believer in broad rights to bear arms. (I wasn't going to make this a political response, but it's sneaking in, so here goes.) To directly answer your question: I generally support the right of most citizens to carry properly registered weapons if they so choose. At the same time, I've read (can't cite them right now) studies that show carrying a weapon greatly increases the chance that a given criminal conflict will escalate to bloodshed. If I recall correctly, it even makes the bearer statistically more likely to be seriously hurt. If accurate, this invalidates the whole reasoning behind "arming oneself for defense". My personal experiences and observations mirror this finding: statistically speaking, it is almost always safer to not carry than it is to carry. More to the point: I would personally rather be seriously injured in a criminal conflict than remain uninjured if that required me to kill someone. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a fragile snowflake, quite the opposite.) Of course I'll state the obvious: in both of the incidents I reported above, things would very likely have been worse if any of the people on the receiving end of violence had been armed. So...why do I support the right to bear arms? It's not really about the 2nd amendment for me. I just tend to default to freedom unless there's a very compelling reason not to. Guns are here in the United States, and no matter what, they aren't leaving. The only way for gun regulation to have a material impact on gun violence is to somehow get rid of most of them, which isn't going to happen. There have been and are now many countries with many guns that don't have anything like the levels of violence that we experience in the US. Guns aren't the fundamental problem. In my opinion, the most fundamental problem we have as a society is that we're extremely afraid. Inappropriately afraid. This problem isn't only in US, but it seems to be especially concentrated here. There's a million nuances that I must gloss over in order to complete this reply in a reasonable amount of time. I'm very much not emotionally tied to my thoughts on this issue, as so many people are, and I'm quite open having my opinions modified with strong evidence based arguments.