remember bernie goetz?

R

robtex

Registered Senior Member
Does anyone remember Bernie Goetz? In 1984 he got a a subway in NY and shot 4 teens (one in the back) with an illegally concealed handgun. He walked onto a subway one day and 4 black kids ages 18 and 19 sat down next to him and asked to borrow 5 dollars. He says they threatened him they say he they did not but in the end he shot all four of them one twice and one in the back. With the exception of the first one shot (because he fell down) all of them were running away or standing still when he shot them. Before that he had been mugged twice and had applied for a gun permit before and was turned down.

During and after his legal battle he became a celebrity in America. People cheered him on in those years calling him a patriot asking him to run for major

http://www.bernieformayor.com/pages/940375/index.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/08/18/goetz.htm

and advocating his vigilantism. I was really young when all of this was going on but it and cannot find the story on the net but to make a really long story short his proponets for the most part supported the idea of vigilntism via a handgun and saw him as an innocent guy who was just protecting himself. A lot of handgun owners ( I live in Texas) have told me that they too carry handguns because they need to protect themselves and are quick to point out the 2nd amendment (or 1/2 of it anyway), and right of self defense. Do you feel it is ethical, moral, and or/a civil right (depending on country you live in), to carry a gun and would you be apt to use in the following senerios:

1) you were attacked
2) a loved one was attacked
3) you saw a fight in in progress and wanted to use the firearm as a visual deterent
4) to aid law enforcement
5) to hunt crimminals right after they commit a crime but before they are caught
6) to stop a robbery or grab and run in a store
7) to stop a burglary
8) to stop vandalim of your property
9) to stop vandalim of someone else property

10 ) other (name other)

and if so which ones and why?
 
Every time the handgun issue comes up the pro side brings up these elaborate storys that prove "you have to defend yourself!" that is in quotes because almost invariably these storys are about people killing other people to prevent a robbery. Killing to protect property rather than ones safety are two very different things.

Then if the anti-gun side has its shit together they mention how you are x times more likely to kill a friend or family member with your handgun than some murderous minority on the subway. Americas gun culture is sad and diluted when shooting 4 kids over a matter of intimidation to the tune of $5 is seen as a heroic act.
 
SpyMoose said:
Every time the handgun issue comes up the pro side brings up these elaborate storys that prove "you have to defend yourself!" that is in quotes because almost invariably these storys are about people killing other people to prevent a robbery. Killing to protect property rather than ones safety are two very different things.

Then if the anti-gun side has its shit together they mention how you are x times more likely to kill a friend or family member with your handgun than some murderous minority on the subway. Americas gun culture is sad and diluted when shooting 4 kids over a matter of intimidation to the tune of $5 is seen as a heroic act.
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Yep.

Oh, and what's this i keep hearing about from the American Government? (Ooops, sorry.. I meant, 'the media')...something about 'weapons of mass destruction'????
:)
 
glaucon said:
Yep.

Oh, and what's this i keep hearing about from the American Government? (Ooops, sorry.. I meant, 'the media')...something about 'weapons of mass destruction'????
:)
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Hey you shut up. America and Americans are morally superior to the rest of the world, and as such are entitled to have all these weapons that other countries shouldn't.

It's not dangerous when WE have them, after all, we're the only totally sane and rational people in the world.
 
I never felt the need to carry weapons because I was never seriously threatened with a weapon myself and I do not know people who were ever threatened with anything besides fists.

And burglars normally break into your house when you are away, at least that was the case in the few occurences that happen here.

Strange, I live in a country where it is very hard to own a gun (I live in Germany) and yet I do not feel threatened in anyway. I also never saw serious security issues, I suppose we are all just plain crazy, only US citizens are sane and trusted to carry their weapons with responsibility.
 
i would be compleatly terifide to walk down any street in the US because of the "right to kill anyone you feel like"

more deaths are either a) acidents or b) crimes of passion than will ever be someone randomly killing you

so either your kid gets your gun and acidently shoots himself or you kill your partner because your having a fight
 
Bernhard Goetz was wrong. All he needed to do was show his weapon, and they would have left him alone. Instead, he pulled it out, and opened up on the four of them. That punishment does not fit the crime.

I have a hard time feling too bad for his attackers though. A group of four young men, all much larger than Goetz, mistook him for their normal victim who would give them money with no trouble. How much sympathy do predators such as this deserve?

What many of you in other countries don't know about the U.S. is that here, the bad guys will always have guns.

As the saying goes, a liberal is a conservative who just got put in jail. A conservative is a liberal who just got mugged.

It doesn't take a gun to do serious damage though.
19-year-old arrested in skateboard assault

By ROGER H. AYLWORTH - Staff Writer

A suspect in a savage beating that left a 30-year-old Chico State University graduate student unconscious and bleeding is under arrest.

Justin Eugene Parker, 19, of Chico, was arrested by Chico police Monday and charged with assault with a deadly weapon in the Sept. 26 attack on Jason Newman in Children's Playground, near Broadway and West First Street.

Newman was found unconscious and bleeding in the park just after 3 a.m. Sept. 26 and he was taken to Enloe Medical Center.

The victim's mother, Diana Lee of Rocklin, who came to Chico to be with her son after the attack, said the assault very easily could have been lethal.

Newman was apparently struck with the wheeled side of a skateboard.

The 260-pound grad student, who hoped to earn his master's degree in communications before the end of this semester, was hit once, knocking him to the ground. Then he was struck a second time as he lay there.

His mother said the first blow apparently smashed Newman's sinus cavity, and the second hit fractured the bone around his left eye socket.

Lee said her son's doctor reported, "If he had gotten hit any harder, there could have been a brain injury or he could be dead."

Newman said doctors removed pieces of wood from his wounds that apparently came from the skateboard that had been used on him.
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http://www.chicoer.com/Stories/0,1413,135~25088~2461991,00.html

Lesson? Even in a small, generally safe small town, don't go walking through the park alone at night when you've been drinking. And watch out for guys with skateboards hiding in the bushes.
 
right and thats ONE case out of how many people who walked through a park at night?

or even out of how many people were drunk?

thats what people forget, every crime that comes up is used as proof that you need a gun and no one takes into acount all the times people did similer things and DIDNT need a gun. They also never take into acount the amount of people killed with there OWN guns or crimes of passion or acidents

guns make things LESS safe not MORE safe
 
Repo, i want to bring up a point about your skateboard assult article. That deed took a lot more commintment than most people are will to expend. Pointing a mechanical device at someone and knowing once you pull the trigger most the work, if not all of it is done, takes a very light level of commitment. Taking a skateboard, or any blunt instrument and beating someone to death takes a lot more emotional and physical commentment to do. More than a lot of handgun killers are probably willing to invest.

If the skater had a gun the other kid would still have likely been shot (since he seemed to want to hurt/kill him really really bad). If most murders who used firearms had only a blunt instruement....many wouldn't have the level of commitment it would take to have killed their victim.

Your right, Goetz's was wrong. But he was way too weak of character, from what I have read about him, to have used any other weapon to do the damage he did. I think most fire killers fall in the same category.

Guns create an increased opportunity for homicide. And as Asguard

http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/factsheets/

dreamwalker, fortunatly for you, Germany in the last half of the century has been a much saver country to live in than America. Differnt game here. The links rank murder, rape and assults per capita by country.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_cap

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_rap_cap

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_ass_cap
 
Asguard, I never said that guy should have had a gun to defend himself. I merely brought it up to illustrate that guns alone don't cause crime. If he had a gun, he probably would have been too drunk to use it. The first line of defense is always to keep your wits about you, and avoid dangerous situations when possible.

If you feel safer not having a gun, don't get one. I'll keep my firearms, thank you. But I'm still at a disadvantage to the criminals in this state. Criminals always have their guns, walking around, driving, etc. The fact that it is illegal to do that doesn't deter them anymore than the fact that robbery is illegal stops them from doing that either.
 
Repo Man: the point is that if you keep your gun you are a danger to ME

whos to say i wont come walking down the street and you DROP your gun and it goes off killing me?

or that im not trying to read your gas meter and you shoot me thinking im a threat

or that a cop doesnt shoot me when i have my mobile with me because they assume everyone with there hands in there pockets is reaching for a gun

or that your wife isnt coming home when you dont expect her to surprise you and you shoot her thinking she is a robber (something that has happened many times)

you dont have the RIGHT to put ME in danger or anyone else
 
I'm bored with this subject. Go read this thread again (or maybe for the first time) http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=40712 .

Here in the U.S., until it is changed, I have the right to posess firearms. If through stupidity or carelessness I should injure or kill someone, there is a legal system for that. Dropping a gun and shooting an innocent bystander would be much the same as running someone down with a car on accident, though I'm sure many more die at the hands of bad drivers of the two scenarios. We do not attempt to ban cars because thousands die in them every year.
 
i HATE that argument

guns are DESIGNED to kill people therfor BAD

cars are DESIGNED for transportation therfor iralivent
 
No, a gun is made to fire a high velocity projectile accurately. Or, as I've read that Samuel Colt said, "A gun is a machine designed to throw rocks." What they are thrown at (if anything) is up to the user.
 
Repo Man said:
We do not attempt to ban cars because thousands die in them every year.
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However you need a license showing proficiency in use in order to drive one, insurance in case you screw up in order to own one, A license so the authorities can tell who's car it is, and every car on the market needs to have certain specific safety features as per federal regulation implemented in order to be sold.

That's a lot more than we can say for guns.
 
what a load of crap

guns are DESIGNED to kill

no other purpose

you can debate WHAT they are designed to kill and in some cases you maybe right but an you cant tell me an M-16 is a "rock thrower", its horse shit to say the least
 
Mystech said:
However you need a license showing proficiency in use in order to drive one, insurance in case you screw up in order to own one, A license so the authorities can tell who's car it is, and every car on the market needs to have certain specific safety features as per federal regulation implemented in order to be sold.

That's a lot more than we can say for guns.
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You only need a license, registration, and insurance to operate on public roads. If you don't want to operate it on public roads, you need none of these. Not very many of us have enough private property to have a use for a car that you don't use on public roads. But nonetheless, these regulations don't affect private vehicles on private property.

I don't think requiring licenses and insurance is out of line for a concealed carry permit.
 
Asguard said:
what a load of crap

guns are DESIGNED to kill

no other purpose

you can debate WHAT they are designed to kill and in some cases you maybe right but an you cant tell me an M-16 is a "rock thrower", its horse shit to say the least
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Well Asguard, the majority of guns in the U.S. are used to "kill" paper targets and Aluminum cans. And the occasional old television.
 
Mystech said:
Hey you shut up. America and Americans are morally superior to the rest of the world, and as such are entitled to have all these weapons that other countries shouldn't.

It's not dangerous when WE have them, after all, we're the only totally sane and rational people in the world.
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LOL
Nice.. but this should have been posted in the Comedy thread.
 
repoman,

paper targets and aluminum cans are practice targets for killing living things. You can play the game..of all the things guns are designed for if you want but to me when anti-gun control people start naming all the various things besides killing guns are used for it is an admisstion to the danger of an armed society is.

The fact is they make it very very easy to kill, much more so than any other instrument avaliable.

There is only one thing a gun does shoot. That is it. It can't be used as a power tool, as a measuring device to due simple math or remember your grocery list. It shoots that is it. It projects a piece of metal at high enough rate to be lethal to living things . When a person is holding one and the only thing it is used for is shooting and asit is lethal why would you feel others would not be comfortable with that?

I
 
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