A Usenet persona calling itself KMAN wrote:


So, when some group of robbers is planning to knock off a bank, they
don't
make different plans depending on whether or not they are going to
experience armed resistance? Get real.

Of course they do.

There you go.

Your implication is akin to the long-discarded argument "When rape is
inevitable, lay back and enjoy it."


and most of the time, as most bank robbers are single
individuals, not gangs, they will deliberately choose banks that do NOT
have
armed guards because they don't want to get killed. Most banks today do
not
employ armed guards because they think that it will provoke a
confrontation,
and since the federal government insures the money, they'd rather just
give
the crook the money and let him walk. And usually that's a good plan, and
nobody gets hurt.

OK.

Sometimes, however, particularly violent robbers decide to kill witnesses
anyway, and when that happens, not having any armed people in the bank
ends
up costing many lives.

How often does it happen that bank robbers decide to kill witnesses and
those witnesses would have been saved had there been a Scotty in the crowd
ready to draw and fire?

Once is enough, if I'm in the bank. I'm not going to disarm myself and allow
myself to be put at risk for execution just because you're paranoid that you
might get shot in the ensuing gun battle. That's the risk you take when you
walk out your front door in the morning. If you don't like the odds, then
stay home or carry your own gun.


The solution is obvious: Banks should retain armed guards, but they should
be undercover, in plain clothes, and under orders not to do anything other
than cooperate unless and until the robber starts threatening to shoot
people. Once it becomes known that someone, if not several someones in any
bank is highly likely to be armed, but unidentifiable, crooks will be much
more reluctant to rob banks in the first place

Um. No. It will work once or twice, and once the new policy is known,
they'll start treating every bank just as they would a bank with regular
armed guards, and assume that blasting away will be part of the robbery.

Not usually. The MO of the typical bank robber is to be low-key so that
nobody but the robber and the teller know there is a robbery in progress.
They want money, and they want to get away to spend it, which makes it
unlikely that they will engage in gunplay, which draws immediate attention.


If I'm going to die in such a rampage, I'm at least going to go out trying
to put down the killer, not on my knees with a bullet in the back of my
head, and I'll do it any way I can. If I don't have a gun, I'll use a
knife,
or a chair, or a pen or any weapon available including my teeth and
fingernails.

I'm sure you are dreaming of the day!

Nah. But being mentally prepared to defend onesself does tend to keep one
out of trouble. For example, I still have the cop habit of sitting in my car
for a few moments while watching the inside of the convenience store before
I go in, just so I don't walk in on a robbery in progress. Tactical planning
and situational awareness can keep you out of a lot of trouble.


I think the consequences of living in a gun culture where everyone is
walking around with a gun waiting to shoot other people is not worth
anything.

You weren't in the Luby's cafeteria, or Columbine or at any of the other
mass murders worldwide. You might believe differently if it was your life
on
the line.

I don't think so Scotty.

Oh, I think you would. You'd be insane not to.


In fact, I don't think you'll hear a lot of Columbine surivivors saying that
the lesson they learned from it was they should become gun nuts themselves.

Actually, many people, including several students who were there, said they
wished that somebody, anybody in that school at the time had had a gun. I
talked to several of them the day of the shootings.

When you don't need a gun, having one is innocuous and harmless.

Until innocent people end up dead.

Way more innocent people end up dead because there was not some law-abiding
citizen around with a gun than have every been killed by "friendly fire"
during a gunfight, by many orders of magnitude.


When you
need one, however, nothing else will do.

If your goal in life is to kill people, absolutely.

So, what's your trigger point? How far would someone have to go before you'd
kill them with a gun? I've never met anybody who was able to honestly say
that they would never, ever, under any circumstances use a gun to kill a
criminal.

What would it take for you? The imminent rape and murder of your child,
perhaps?

What you appear to be incapable of understanding is the difference between
being forced to use deadly physical force in order to save someone's life
and your idiotic notion that just because someone carries a gun, and knows
how to use it, they are champing at the bit to kill someone.

I have a fire extinguisher in my car, but that doesn't mean I hope it
catches on fire.

Your comments are nothing more than lame attempts at demonization because
you are intellectually incapable of defending any sort of rational anti-gun
position.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser