Grandma busted for trying to carry handgun into Magic Kingdom

From the book Freakonomics:

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It might be worthwhile to take a step back and ask a rudimentary question: what is a gun? It's a tool that can be used to kill someone, of course, but more significantly, a gun is a great disrupter of the natural order.

A gun scrambles the outcome of any dispute. Let's say that a tough guy and a not-so-tough guy exchange words in a bar, which leads to a fight. It's pretty obvious to the not-so-tough guy that he'll be beaten, so why bother fighting? The pecking order remians intact. But if the not-so-tough guy happens to have a gun, he stands a good chance of winning. In this scenario the introduction of a gun may well lead to more violence.

Now instead of the tough guy and the not-so tough guy, picture a high-school girl out for a nighttime stroll when she is suddenly set upon by a mugger. What if only the mugger is armed? What if only the girl is armed? What if both are armed? A gun opponent might argue that the gun has to be kept out of the mugger's hands in the first place. A gun advocate might argue that the high-school girl needs to have a gun to disrupt what has become the natural order: it's the bad guys that have guns. (If the girl scares off the mugger, then the introduction of gun leads to less violence.)

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And later in the chapter:

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Then there is the opposite argument - that we need more guns on the street, but in the hands of the right people (like the high-school girl above, instead of her mugger). The economist John R. Lott Jr. is the main champion of this idea. His calling card is the book More Guns, Less Crime, in which he argues that violent crime has decreased in areas where law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry conceale weapons. His theory might be surprising, but it is sensible. If a criminal thinks a potential victim may be armed, he may be deterred from committing the crime...

...Then there was the troubling allegation that Lott actually invented some of the survey data that supported his more guns/less crime theory. When other scholars have tried to replicate his results, they found that right-to-carry gun laws simply don't bring down crime.

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That's just a small sample of what's written on the subject and I only passed along the parts relevant to the subject at hand and cut things to keep it as short as possible. Interstingly, they also mention the facts about Switzerland (and the abundance of issued assault rifles in contrast with an incredibly low level of crime) that were mentioned earlier in this discussion.

My take? Let people have guns if they want them. The bad guys will get guns regardless (most don't obtain them legally already) so why stack the natural order in their favor even more by not letting the good guys have them too? All gun laws and gun control does is keep guns out of the hands of the good guys. I don't see that making things any better. The key is to get them out of the hands of the bad guys...and that isn't going to happen.

If people like bholcomb and Defcon62 feel better by having the chance to level the playing field and keep the natural order intact - more power to them. (literally :) )

With all of that said, I just want to point out that I don't own a gun and have never even fired a weapon more dangerous than a BB gun in my life. I have no desire to own a gun and don't feel I need one.

"Love guns sign up for the Army.. they will give you all the action you want. After seeing what a gun can do to a person and the blood .. you would never never want to pick that gun up ever again"

As a former Army Ranger who has been shot(Panama 1989) and who has killed with a weapon I say that statement is BS, nearly everyone I know from my army days still owns a weapon.

This is a America and its our choice(to own a weapon) just like its a gun opponent's right as an American to not want guns and there right to say so. Its what makes our country so great.

And yes I do have a permit to carry a weapon in NY state so I am legal unlike this stupid woman mentioned in the article.*** This post was edited by supermandl 12/12/2007 5:45:32 PM ***
*** This post was edited by supermandl 12/12/2007 5:46:19 PM ***

Wow, Jeff. That was a very immature thing to do. You just deprived Defcon62 of his freedom of speech. Are you going to remove my account because I disagree with you as well?

In all fairness, it did seem that that's what you were saying about your girlfriend. Defcon and myself would prefer to defend our lives and the lives of our loved ones in the face of an armed attacker. Who are you to deny us that?

Like Lord Gonchar says, criminals will ALWAYS have guns. That's what I think that most anti-gun folks don't realize. Most criminals get their automatic weapons illegally in the first place, so they aren't going to give a crap about other laws. Taking them away from law-abiding citizens leaves us helpless. It's true that the police cannot be everywhere at once. So, instead of waiting for their twenty-minute response time, during which my family and I would probably end up dead, I would prefer to shoot an intruder/assailant over getting killed. I would not be able to just sit there and accept that "it was my time", or whatever you had said earlier.

Please take in mind, that I am a libertarian. I have liberal AND conservative viewpoints. This is one where I feel the government should not infringe on our personal right to bear arms (as guaranteed to us in the 2nd Amendment). If that makes me gun-crazy, then you can label me that, I guess. I do believe that proper background checks and gun-safety courses should be taken before conceal-and-carry permits are issued. I'd rather have a gun when someone's trying to mug me or murder me.

He has no freedom of speech here, this is a privately owned site. He broke the rules, he's done. That's why his account was removed. There are countless members here who I disagree with most of the time.

No one is denying you of anything. Get over yourself.

Get over myself? Sounds like someone's a little sensitive. I'm not the one with the power-trip. Defcon didn't really attack your character. You made it seem that you would prefer to let yourself and your girlfriend die in a situation like that over carrying a gun. It seems like he was just the most vocal advocate whose views you disagreed with.

Plus, you attacked Bholcomb's character, and basically said that as a radio person, he was unimportant. Typical liberal hypocrisy, somebody disagrees, so they don't get to talk anymore.

And gun ownership does have a huge place in our "societal contract". The government has no duty to protect us. I wouldn't trust them with it, anyway. When individuals i.e. rapists, muggers, murderers, break that contract, who will stop them? The police aren't gonna be there. I would prefer to own a gun so that I could properly defend myself, my property, and my family.

What would you say the societal contract that Americans abide to is? The Constitution, right? The 2nd amendment is part of the Constitution.

"Who are you defending yourself against? Guns aren't for protection, they're for killing people. Killing someone else before they kill you is not protection the way I see it." That's what you said earlier. Guns are tools. Cars kill a lot of people, sometimes on purpose (remember that lady that ran over her husband?). Doesn't mean that we ban cars, or knives, or hammers, or baseball bats.

P.S. Meteorologists don't know jack. Ever hear the same thing being said by major news network weathermen? 'Cuz I haven't.

Those aren't meteorologists, they're TV personalities.

Funny you bring up cars, because you don't have a right to drive those either.

I can't believe you signed up just to "participate" in this thread. Now who's "sensitive?"

He can shut up anyone he wants - It's his site. You can choose not to come here, it's your right. Although I disagree with Jeff on most subjects, and really have no idea how he can even think the way he does about most things, we still carried on a decent argument. I was actually expecting him to take some personal shots on me, and he never really did.

I did mention some names of both TV meteorologists and NWS meteorologists, and that was never a countered point. Do I think he's still pretty ignorant of the subject? Yeah pretty much. My guess is Jeff heard some Yahoo out chasing a storm once on a scanner and has based all of his impression of amateur radio on that. It's unfortunate, but I know it happens. We have yahoos just in our own group that sound pretty ridiculous on a radio. There isn't much we can do about them other than just not include them in anything important (damage assessment in a tornado stricken area, for example)

For the record, I've been around amateur radio people a lot, and even started studying for a license. Then the Internet came along and I found it boring. I used to listen to Skywarn nets all the time, but eventually felt they added nothing to information already available. The guy who runs the net in my county was particularly hilarious.