From: sns@bondi.jpl.nasa.gov (Sam Southard)
Subject: Re: Killing burglars.
Organization: SAR Systems Development & Processing, JPL
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 17:12:11 GMT

In article <LOWRY.92Aug21114926@rotor.watson.ibm.com> lowry@watson.ibm.com (Andy Lowry) writes:
>I never said that when there's an intruder in your house you should
>assume they're not dangerous.  I merely stated my belief (and I may be
>wrong on this) that they are not likely to intend you or your family
>harm.  The main points are that (1) if you own a gun you should not

They may not be likely to indend you harm.  However, assume that it's something
like 10% of the intruders are willing to do you harm (I have no idea if this
is an accurate figure).  Do you want to take a 10% chance that your family is
going to be killed or injured, just to protect the 90% of burglars who would
simply leave your family unharmed?  Personally, I would condemn 90% of the
burglars to death unjustly (given that they're caught in the act in this way
and I have no uncontestable evidence that they are not going to hurt my family)
instead of 10% of the burgled families.

When the burglar is in my house, I am not going to wait for him to prove
himself guilty of intent to do me or my family harm.  When you're fighting
for your life (as you are in this case.  Or at least may be - you have no
way of knowing), innocent until proven guilty has much too high a cost, and
the people who would pay for it (the burgled families) are not the right
people to bear the cost.

>simply go blasting at the intruder without a better reason that they
>have intruded into your house; and (2) keeping a gun in the house to

No one is saying simply blast away at every bump in the night.  At least,
I am not.  However, I am saying that an intruder being is my house is
assumed to be intending harm (under the above circumstances, 90% of the
time I am wrong).  Unless he gives me absolute evidence that he is not
going to intend me harm, he's dead.  I will not take chances with my family.
Would you?

I'm not going to put my family at risk because someone decides to break into my
house.  If the best way to assure that my family will be safe is to kill the
burglar without a warning, I will do so.  If the best way get that assurance is
to call the police and run from the house, I will do so.  I will not assume
that the latter of the two options is the best one for all circumstances.

>begin with strikes me as idiotic.

It is idiotic to just keep a gun lying around.  For example, the urban legend
type story of keeping a loaded handgun in your nightstand drawer is truly
stupid.

>One poster suggested that keeping a gun in the house promotes
>evolution... stupid people get killed, and the species is better off
>for it (I'm paraphrasing... apologies if I'm not doing an accurate job
>of it).  Perhaps we'd be better off if this poster simply went out and
>sped things up by shooting people who act stupidly (making sure to
>leave himself for last :-).

That was me.  And it was, of course, partly tongue-in-cheek (but only partly).
Note that I was not claiming that keeping a gun in the house promotes evolution.
I was claiming that keeping a gun in the house and not educating everyone who
could come into contact with it promotes evolution.  I was also not advocating
any sort of acceleration of the process (evolution is a slow processes).  It's
also only evolution if they do it to themselves.

And, yes, if you ever hear that I am, or one of my relatives is, killed or
injured by a gun accident, it is evolution in action.  But I don't think that
it will happen.  Not because "accidents don't happen to me" but because I am
smart enough to take precautions to be as certain as possible that an
accident won't happen.

>The claim was that by properly training children and other household
>occupants in the dangers and proper use of firearms makes their
>presence in the house safe.  Fact is, I frequently hear news reports
>of children who accidentally shot each other, or someone who
>accidentally shot a friend because they thought the gun was unloaded.

I also hear them.

>In most cases, these people had been taught to respect guns.

Wrong.  If they had been taught to respect guns, they would have done at least
two things differently:

(1) They would have made sure that the gun was unloaded.  Even when you "know"
	that you have done this, you never assume that you are correct.  You
	always assume that the gun is loaded.
(2) Even after you've made sure that the gun is unloaded, you never point a
	gun at someone unless you want to kill or seriouly injure them.  You
	always assume that by divine intervention a bullet could materialize
	in the chamber and the trigger could be pulled.

Had they done either of these two things the "accident" would not have happened.

>Unfortunately, training and responsible thinking are far from
>foolproof when a child is caught up in horseplay, is pressured by
>peers, or when an adult is intoxicated.  It just doesn't seem to work
>very well.

How the hell does a child caught up in horseplay get a gun?  If this is
possible, it is evolution in action.  Guns should be kept locked up, with a
secure lock.  If you have the gun for protection in the night, that place
should probably be in your bedroom, but it should still always be locked.
The ammunition should probably be kept elsewhere, or at least in a differnt
drawer, with a different lock.  The child should never even know there's a gun
in the house until he's mature enough to know that you NEVER use a gun in
horseplay.

A very similar statement (evolution in action) applies for an intoxicated adult.
If you're stupid enough to have a gun around in a condition that you could load
it, aim it, etc. while intoxicated, and you allow yourself to get intoxicated
to the point where you would actually do it, it truly is evolution in action.

These news reports of accidents are not evidence that responsible gun owners
have accidents.  They are evidence that there are irresponsible gun owners.
The fact that irresponsible gun owners exist and how to eliminate them is
another discussion.  If your answer is not "all guns should be eliminated
from the face of the earth and no one should be allowed to own those that are
left" I suspect we would agree in that discussion.

>It seems pretty clear to me that if I have a gun in the house I stand
>a much greater risk of having that gun accidentally used to kill a
>family member or friend than of having my home invaded and then using
>the weapon to disable / kill the invader.  If I consider the
>conditional probability that the weapon is used to stop an invader
>given that my home has been invaded, we're probably talking a
>reasonably high probability.  But my home is not that likely to be
>invaded in the first place.  That's why not owning a gun is most

Really?  I believe the relevant statistic is that more than 1 in 10 homes are
burglarized each year, at least around here.  I live in a very good
neighborhood, and I'm sure that that statistic is skewed by the very bad
neighborhoods.  However, in cities, the bad areas just are not that far
away from the good areas.  For example, San Marino (a very, very good area) is
just three or so miles away from the worst areas of Pasadena.

>likely to result in the continued health and safety of my family.  If
>I follow worst-case reasoning I buy a gun.  If I consider likelihoods
>I forbid them in my house, knowing (due to my worst-case reasoning)
>that there's a small chance that I've made the wrong choice.

From that statement, I conclude that you do not think you are capable of
educating your family on how to properly respect a gun and are unwilling to
take the proper precautions.  I can understand that, and that is certainly
your choice.  However, I am not incapable of educating my family and taking
the proper precautions.

The statement "If I have a gun in the house I stand a much greater risk of
having that gun accidentally used to kill a family member or friend than of
having my home invaded and then using the weapon to disable / kill the
invader." may apply when the "I" involved is Andy Lowry.  It does not apply
when the "I" involved is Sam Southard, Jr., or any other truly responsible gun
owner.  In fact, that statement not applying is probably a pretty good
definition of a truly responsible gun owner.
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