posted May 10, 2013 07:29 PM            

I have read a few profiles from couple countries and a pro-Second Amendment site, and the suggestion is that it's not a Hollywood portrayal I've given. A criminal is armed for a reason: leverage (and outside of a crime: self-protection). Usually, it's enough leverage that it needn't be discharged. You're saying that a criminal's calculated use of leverage is the exception to the rule. It's not. When does violence come in to play? When someone in the situation becomes unwieldy. Violence will coax compliance.

Now you're talking about the introduction of another gun into the scenario, and claiming that this is more often the case, and as such criminals run. It's not necessarily more often the case. If a criminal brings a gun to a crime as leverage, another gun in the mix is going to be a counter-point to that leverage. It makes the situation more chaotic, so the criminal or criminals bail.

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In the vast majority of cases criminals don't want a fight

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That's logical, but in the majority of cases (I would think) they also don't get a fight.

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Shooting is also going to draw police

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That's true, so it makes sense to make for an efficient escape which could mean a shoot out or just running.

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whereas a homeowner is very likely to get away with shooting a home intruder

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posted May 10, 2013 08:30 PM            

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Originally posted by AcousticGod:
How is it that I'm imagining, and you're not? What is your post based on? I've gone looking for back-up for your point as well as my own, and to a large extent it's not readily available.

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You didn't back your claim, you just asserted it as if it were obvious, so I didn't see a need to back up my own, especially as it was likely to be ignored anyway.

I know people who were saved by them. This includes an elderly woman who carry concealed who came home to find an intruder. He walked toward her and apparently wanted to see terror but he stopped when she pulled her pistol, turned, and ran out a side door (and she called police). That sounds pretty typical to me on how it works (supposedly more than a million times a year in the US), and a lot of lives are saved this way, and even in the rare case with a fatality it's usually the bad guy, and plenty of times it saves multiple lives in the process, like I know a woman who shot her husband who made it clear he was going to kill her and the children), and I see trying to disarm them as evil & malicious.

I hear a lot more news on how criminals run when confronted by a gun than not (I've seen plenty like this), as opposed to Hollywood scenerios of dramatic gun fights which make for good entertainment but are a poor portrayal of reality (it's extremely rare to hear that it works like in Hollywood movies, I can think of only ONE home robbery like that and one mass shooting that followed the Hollywood model, at least offhand). I've also heard and read of plenty of violence that happened to those without a gun as well (which is what would've happened to those with a gun had they been disarmed, plus more if criminals could reasonably assume their potential victims would be unarmed).

posted May 11, 2013 08:16 PM            

There's no doubt that a criminal running into another gun would or should be nervous, especially if the gun is firing. Outside of that, anything could happen.

posted May 11, 2013 08:36 PM            

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Originally posted by AcousticGod:
I watched that YouTube video as well, and I couldn't help but think that it was that video that informed your position.

There's no doubt that a criminal running into another gun would or should be nervous, especially if the gun is firing. Outside of that, anything could happen.

I don't think there was anything particularly Hollywood about the post you originally claimed was. I do think that victims often have more to lose than criminals, and I know that fear of loss is a powerful motivator for a lot of people. Of course, that could play out in going for a gun, but it could also play out as backing down, and letting the criminal have what they want. The second isn't inherently less "real life" than the first.

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One last time: most criminals don't want to get into gun fights (especially when even if they win they're not going to get what they're after and will likely face another gunfight with police soon after) even when they have them (a lot of times they don't, especially those targeting women & elderly). They do in Hollywood movies, and you assume they do, but they don't. That clip doesn't stand by itself, I've seen a great many like it, and rarely, if ever, do those with guns shoot back (and even when they do then they almost never hit the defender).

I've seen even more news where mothers, elderly, and the like didn't have guns when attacked (whether or not the thugs had guns of their own). Those news stories are almost always much more tragic.

posted May 12, 2013 07:26 PM            

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One last time: most criminals don't want to get into gun fights

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I don't know why you feel the need to repeat yourself. I wasn't saying that criminals with guns LOVE getting in gun fights, did I? No. I didn't.

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They do in Hollywood movies, and you assume they do, but they don't.

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I never said or implied that criminals ENJOY getting in gun fights. I said that they had leverage (first in having a gun, and second in having the decision already made to put their lives potentially on the line).