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Attack Changes Democrat Lawmakers View on Handguns »
Posted by: bobo-in-texas 2 years, 7 months agoIt's funny how a gun can in stantly change your perspec tive on things, make you wish you could rewrite history. State Rep. Michael DeBose, a southside Cleveland Democrat, discovered this lesson the night of May 1, when he thought he was going to die. That's the night he wished he had that gun vote back.
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Comments: 159
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bobo-in-texas
May 16, 2007, 10:08 a.m.A real world experience brings another anti-gun advocate back to reality.
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amazed
May 16, 2007, 10:12 a.m.I have no desire to own or carry a gun, but when the gun laws in this country (or my state) become so restrictive that only criminals can have them, I will be down on the street corner getting myself a Saturday night special.
As it is now, CT has concealed carry permits, so it is a crap shoot for the criminals as to who is carrying and who is not.
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jumpmaster
May 16, 2007, 10:24 a.m.When I lived in the SF Bay Area, I had two good female friends. Their only bad trait was that they were off the chart liberal. They were great women but they were touchy feely, peace and love, rehabilitate criminals, etc.
Well, they were walking down the street in the Marina district which is a pretty upscale, yuppie, area of SF. They got robbed. They were put face down in the sidewalk at gun point and robbed.
A funny thing happened. They both wanted to get guns for protection and that "mother f**ker that robbed them should be caught and executed."
I guess thing are different when they affect you and not the other guy.
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pawfoots
May 16, 2007, 10:50 a.m.It's all about perspective. I am all for every citizen having the rigth to have/own a gun. But I respect those that don't wish to have/own one. Just don't tell me I shouldn't have one if I want one - and I won't tell you to own one if you don't want to.
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BronxBomber
May 16, 2007, 11:23 a.m."DeBose said he knows that a gun doesn't solve Cleveland's violence problem; it's merely a street equalizer.
"There are too many people who are just evil and mean-spirited. They will hurt you for no reason. If more people were packing guns, it might serve as a deterrent."
& that to me says it all.
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birddog54Comment has been removed: User banned.
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elel
May 16, 2007, 2:15 p.m.Would've could've Should've...DeBose's story was very compelling, but, no harm came to him due to his run in with armed criminals. I'm not sure how I feel about gun laws. I have no urge to have a gun myself, either, though I do want the right to own one should I choose to. Whether we have laws for the honest citizens to own them or not, I don't feel laws in anyway are going to change the fact that criminals will still have illegal guns.
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CharacterCounts
May 16, 2007, 5:42 p.m.Two days ago here in Alabama, a guy walked into a Wachovia branch, shot and killed two employees and robbed the place...upon leaving a customer in the parking lot saw him with a gun in one hand and a bag in the other and pulled out his own handgun...the bank robber then attempted to take someone hostage but because of the fast actions of the customer with the gun, the robber gave up and this customer is now being hailed as a hero. The customer with the gun never fired a shot. If more people carried guns and knew how to use them, idiot criminals might think twice. But then again, they are idiots, so maybe they won't.
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Watchemoket
May 16, 2007, 5:42 p.m.I have been the victim of violent crimes - against my property (cars broken into and items stolen several times over perhaps 20 years, house vandalized) and against my person (assaulted twice, robbed once - no weapon apparent). Of course I was mad every time it happened, but given time to reflect on the situation I cooled off.
I do NOT advocate taking guns away from law-abiding citizens and I can even agree that concealed weapons permits may be a good idea - within reasonable limits and with substantial education, background and notification qualifications.
I also do not think that such permits are even close to a 'cure-all' for violent crimes and believe that they MAY (or may not) make things worse in the long run. The only way to deal effectively with violence of all kinds is to treat the many CAUSES of the violence. From poverty to lack of education, drug abuse and single-parent families, all may have a part to play in generating violence. Carrying a gun doesn't help these.
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hamy
May 16, 2007, 5:48 p.m.I just don't understand how a false sense of security could make anything better. My Dad had a gun. I knew where it was. He saw me touch it once and got rid of it immediately.
I know how to shoot. I have had gun safety trainig but I feel that the oxymoron is too much. I have been a victim of crime. And it still didn't make me want to own a death machine.
There is no safe gun.
And what I REALLY don't understand is the idiots who say that they need an automatic weapon or machine gun for personal use. That is ridiculous.
Enjoy your guns, but don't come crying to me when your kid shoots themselves in the head with the gun they found in your closet.
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Watchemoket
May 16, 2007, 5:50 p.m.In the long run, the expanded prevalence of guns - legal or illegal, concealed or openly carried - serves in some sense to increase the culture of violence. I can see, as posted above, that there are and will always be some instances in which the mere display of a handgun will defuse a potentially violent situation, but I just do not see how the overall frequency of violent encounters will be decreased by increasing the number of guns in circulation.
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simonsez
May 16, 2007, 6:23 p.m.Criminals don't want the legals carrying weapons ... it's too dangerous. You could get shot.
It's best to pull jobs where you are safe.
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icono1
May 16, 2007, 8:36 p.m.Reality is a great teacher. Any person 'caught' out alone or isolated can at any given time face a person with a gun and/or an attitude. It is better to be prepared for such an event; if a gun adds to that preparation, then so be it. Criminal's will always have ways of working around any gun law put on the book's. And it really sucks when one of them, a criminal, pops out of the wood work armed, breaking bad and you have nothing but fright and fear to face them with. By the way; I have yet to see anyone out run a bullet. Even the criminal.
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TheAttacks
May 16, 2007, 8:45 p.m.A gun would have been nice in that situation, and I'm not saying that it's wrong for people to want to protect themselves, but I don't think that having a lot of people packing heat would solve more problems then it would create. People are unpredictable and often act in the heat of the moment. Think about it, just because you have a permit for your gun doesn't make you less likely to walk in on your wife and her lover and decide "Yep, gun time".
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Goppy
May 16, 2007, 10:59 p.m.They say Democrats are just Republicans that havent been mugged yet.
They also say Republicans are jus t democrats that havent got sick yet,
or that havent been screwed over by some corporation yet,
or that havent had their 401 K's or pension looted yet,
or that have had their kids get shipped off to Iraq for the 3rd time to supervise their civil war,
or who watched as their grand parents deteriorate cause they cant afford drugs,
or because their daughter got raped by some criminal and cant get an abortion,
or whos gotten physically ill at all the perversion committed by Republicans the last 5 years,
or who are fed up with the way the religious elite and the republican elite manipulate each other.
But Paul Harvey says democrats are bad, and I heard Rush say that too, and I believe in media as the arbiter of truth, so Im stickin with Republicans.
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hoppy
May 16, 2007, 11:33 p.m.I'd be doing more than sipping on a McDonalds shake while I'm being shot at. Maybe this Idiot has gained too much confidence in anti gun laws.
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ETproductions
May 17, 2007, 1:34 a.m.I've been on both sides of this issue. Once a long time ago, having an M1 carbine in the house saved me and my family from an ugly bunch of street thugs. After creating a ruckus on the street, breaking out street lamps, they burst through my front door. I leveled the rifle at the leader, and he appoligized that he had the wrong apartment. Things got real quiet real quick.
But the truth is that if you keep a gun in your home, you are much more likely to die of gun violence. The statistics are VERY clear. It may be an intruder who finds your gun, but it is MUCH more likely to be a family dispute that boils over into violence where the gun is used to settle the matter.
Guns kill. We can't unring the bell and remove all the guns already on the street. Passing laws against possessing them only ensures that criminals will be the only group armed. But think things through before you decide to follow in Phil Spector's footsteps.
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ETproductions
May 17, 2007, 1:37 a.m.One other point. This is obviously a biased article. The party is called the Democratic Party, and those in it are called Democrats. When you see Democrat Party be aware you are seeing one of the current Repugnican white house talking points. They think that term sounds more insulting to democracy, which they obviously oppose.
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anthrosteve
May 17, 2007, 4:11 a.m.I really don't understand the "if I have a gun, I will be safer then if I don't" rhetoric. I like all the talk about, I had a gun and it made the bad guy run away. But what about the times where guns made the situation worse. You try and pull a gun on a bad guy and he shoots you. Or you pull your gun and you get into a gun battle killing innocent people. I also like the if we get rid of guns only bad people will have guns. But do you not think that the lack of gun laws have made it easier, for criminals to get a hold of guns. I mean a criminal had to get a gun legally at some point. I bet most illegal guns were bought legally at some point. Be it bought for a criminal. Or bought by an innocent person and then stolen. Like it or not I bet countries with stricter gun laws have lower gun death rates per capita then the US. Why it is harder to get ahold of guns and therefore harder to kill with guns.
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anthrosteve
May 17, 2007, 4:22 a.m.Here is an example your neighbor tothe north Canada had in 2002, 816 gun deaths. 4/5th of firearm deaths in Canada are suicide. In 2000 the homicide rate for the U.S. was 3.8 per 100,000 people. In Canada the homicide rate for the year was 0.5 per 100,000. In Canada, homicides accounted for 18% of deaths involving firearms in 2000, compared with 38% in the United States. It is harder for Canadians to get a hold of guns and because of that reason. The country is actually safer then in the US. If all your apocolytic theories were true Canada would be full of homicides because no one has a gun here but the bad guys. Which is clearly not the case. Face it, the tougher you are on guns the better your chance of not being killed by a gun. All the Statistics are from Statistics Canada who reported on this. I am sorry they are not more current, but I doubt much has changed.
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mossback
May 17, 2007, 4:49 a.m.A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged yet. It is funny how liberals are all for the 1st Amendment but want to wipe out the 2nd Amendement. No wonder real American's consider liberals to be traitors.
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canadianrancher57
May 17, 2007, 8:25 a.m.Up here in the north we've got gun laws that allow us to have guns but when it comes to hand guns they are very restrictive, the government seems to think long guns are not as dangerous as hand guns. To carry a hand gun around up here would likely be impossible because of all the permits you would need, might be wrong on this last part never looked into it.
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AntiNeoCon
May 17, 2007, 9:25 a.m.To you people who feel live in areas where you feel you must carry a weapon to be safe, have you ever considered moving to a safer area? Now I strongly believe that everyone (except felons) should have the right to own a gun, but there are a few hot heads out there who will kill you over road rage if they had a gun on them. For home protection, it is okay...but I would be skeptical about letting everyone wear one. Too many John Wayne's is not a good thing. :)
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jumpmaster
May 17, 2007, 10:09 a.m.Let me get this straight. A person wants to hand out condoms to teenagers because "they are going to have sex anyway". Aren't they really passing out condoms to promote and encourage the teens to have sex? Or could it be that the teens should be prepared for an inevitable event? Just because a teen has a condom in his wallet or in her purse, does not mean in all cases that person is on the hunt for sex. Maybe it could be called preparation for a possible event.
Just because a person carries a concealed handgun does not mean that he is out to kill someone. Maybe that person wants to be prepared for a possible event.
You can't get in your time machine and de-conceive the baby and you can't get in your time machine and get your gun to get the criminal to de-attack you.
You can either be prepared for things or you can let them happen and then whine and whine for someone else to pick up your pieces.
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simonsez
May 17, 2007, 10:20 a.m.You Canadians got to realize these gun deaths are generally related to drug deals, either users trying to get money to buy or dealers killing each other.
We also have an immigration problem. We have "gangs" from every part of the world.
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