http://www.myfoxchicago.com/...n-self-defense-gone-wrong

I'd love to see people try to defend these types of laws in this situation...

And yet we don't have an issue with how people deal with guns in the US?

dunno. don't think i would shoot my neighbors just for knocking on the door, but they might be good neighbors. currently watching "America, The Story of Us". you really need to quit complaining about people getting shot. wouldn't be an America if people didn't go around shooting each other.

Obviously we don't have all the details just yet, but what bothers me is that the homeowner shot a woman in the head in 'self defense' and didn't even bother to call the police. THAT is what makes me sad for America; someone can kill another human being, regardless of the circumstances, and then just pretend like nothing happened.

Why can many other countries in the world have as many or more guns per capita as the US and yet not have NEARLY the number of gun-related deaths. There's something disturbingly wrong with America...

whatever it is, it isn't actually a new issue. it's been around since Cain and Abel. quit pretending that lives are valuable. 1/2 the world's population only need to pay out $2.50 a day to be able to live their lives.

or, in other parts of the world, 4800 people get to live for a year off of what I'm required just to pay for rent and utilities to house one person for a year. not sure how much i spend on food, so i didn't include that.

dang. so, one piss poor American drunk is probably worth 15k to 20k worth of other peoples. that a heck a lot of man hours. i should probably find something constructive to do.

guess not. once i figured out that i do the equivalent of 120k to 200k man hours per work day, my back started hurting and I've decided to take an alcohol break until those slackers catch up.

Dearborn Heights, isn't that a suburb of Detroit?

I guess that makes me a decent human being who values human lives. Shame on me?

how much effort do you put into improving other people's lives? doesn't do much good just crying because somebody died. think you're just somebody complaining about guns and the minority of people who use them incorrectly.

here, worry about the top 10 reasons why people die in the US before you go out of your way worrying about something that doesn't even make the cut.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Since talking solves nothing, we should just ignore the issue each and every time something like this pops up? Please remember your callous responses the next time someone shoots up a school or blows someone away in 'self-defense' because of this shoot first, ask questions later mindset we apparently have.

As far as putting effort into improving other people's lives, you're right, I haven't done much. I'm an Eagle Scout and went to a Catholic school where I had to volunteer each quarter. I also pay taxes in the US despite not even living there. So I guess I've done nothing, therefore I shouldn't be outraged when someone is gunned down like this.

Once again, way to distract from one of the significant points that comes up every time: Most other industrialized countries have just as many or more guns per capita, and yet they manage NOT to shoot each other all the damn time. Maybe it's the way people like you think that leads to this dichotomy?

That got em going Dibs, way to go!

i just checked the FBI's UCR. maybe my eyes were crossed or i was seeing double, but it appeared that there were only 15k murders for 2011. what are you going on about like we're running around killing each other with guns? how many facts do you need posted before you even attempt to look at reality?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...omicides-ownership/table/

Gosh, that's some esteemed colleagues that the US seems to be hanging out with!

Compare the US with Japan, Canada, Oz+NZ and the majority of Europe(ie the majority of industrialized nations in the world) and tell me what you discover.

We have a problem in the US. And the first step to fixing a problem IS ADMITTING YOU HAVE A DAMN PROBLEM.

And sorry, I misremembered a statistic. The US is the highest per capita, but not % of people owning guns. Lots of people just own a LOT of guns.

And gosh, ONLY 15000 people were murdered with guns. Guess we should just ignore that then...

You're a Scout also tella? Cool :)

On topic: You do seem to have a worse problem with guns in the US. We have tons of guns in Sweden, but very few shootings. Mostly I think because even Police get thoroughly questioned when they shoot someone. The attitude is very different.

And before any of you get your panties in a bunch, you'll notice I'm not blaming the guns themselves. As I've referenced, switzerland and finland have a LOT of guns, but they don't seem to be using them to kill each other very much. The problem is the PEOPLE.

What does this have to do with guns? A gun is a tool. If an idiot picks up a screwdriver to punch nails into wood, do you ask his neighbor to give up his right to own a screwdriver?

If you compare the US with those other countries, please take into account the population difference. A much larger pool of idiots.

I agree that there are multitudes of problems in the US, but you have to identify what the problem is. Taking away any gun rights will make things WORSE. Not better.

that's another misquote. i didn't mention anything about guns being used to commit them. just stated there were 15,000 murders. suppose i could go look up how many of them involved guns, but it'll probably be less than 15,000.

btw, 15k divided by 316m is like a 0% murder rate. doubt that we can do much better than that.

http://www.fbi.gov/...ded-homicide-data-table-7

70% of the 0% of people that were murdered in the US involved the use of guns? what exactly is your goal tellarion?

with guns is around 13k

and of those 13k about 10k are gang related and take place in ares that guns are banned or are illegally owned/not registered.

no matter what laws you pass you wont stop that.

you can regulate guns all you want but you simply cannot regulate hate. until we fix THAT problem, we will not stop gun crimes.




as for this instance. dearborn heights is a suburb of detroit. I will wait for the details to come out to see what happened.

as for "another stand your ground case", stand your ground has a very legitimate purpose. this is not even a stand your ground case, the media will try to make it out to be, to attack guns.

look for feinstien to try to pass a measure about banning shotguns in the coming week.

what we do know:

the woman got in a car accident at 1:30AM about 4 blocks away from the house she was shot at (at 3:40AM). what was she doing for 2 hours and were drugs/alcohol a factor in the crash? we don't know yet.

meanwhile, the family is publicly LYING about the indecent to stir emotions into it. they have said in their statements to any media that will listen, that she was shot in the back of her head as she turned to leave (showing she was trying to get away) however, the police and the investigators say she was shot in the front of her face below her mouth.


the only story we will ever hear is the one of the shooter sadly. but before we blindly accuse this man of being a cold-blooded murderer, give him his day in court and lets see how it plays out.

what could offset those stats would be disappearing person stats. but I'm having difficulties in finding out the stats for that particular problem. maybe Obama doesn't want it to be reported properly.

furthermore, while the US has a high gun related homicide rate *cough* "war on drugs" *cough* compared to the rest of the world, the US also has a very VERY low overall violent crime rate. lower than most other developed nations. particularly because the masses ARE armed and able to defend themselves in an instance of violent crime.

how you figure that other countries actually let people own guns when it takes at least 20 of them to match us?

you make no sense whatsoever. we come in 5th place for total homicides by guns, and the 4 countries that beat us did it with only 12% of the guns available to all 5 countries.

What do "stand your ground" laws have to do with this? If you're referring to Zimmerman/martin, his actions were covered under plain old self-defense laws that are on the books in all 50 states. The media here got everyone hyped up over stand your ground laws when it had nothing to do with that case.

It doesn't look like any sort of "stand your ground" law is being cited here either. The guy's claiming typical self-defense.

what's funny is... so many people die in America, that we have a "it's only 15 thousand people that are killed." attitude 15k each year for 10 years is a lot... 150k people killed is nothing short of crazy.. and I'm sure the numbers will only go up. 75 thousand in 5 years. and we think it's just normal.

no, what's funny is, is that you actually expect people to live forever. if you don't think we have decent stats now, check out what they were 70 years ago when Europe was busy trying to broil all of the Jews.

what does life length of natural deaths have todo with people being killed by guns... I don't expect people to live forever... I expect them not to be killed while shopping/asking for help/walking/going outside to get their news. telling people its ok, we're not as evil as those guys, is not an excuse to be waving off Gun deaths.

Instead of banning guns, we should ban Americans. ;-)

looks like it happens a lot less than car accidents, how do you determine that it's a problem with society if it isn't happening all that much?

http://m.bbc.co.uk/...ence-environment-24455141

worry about the fluffroaches. looks like we'll be torturing them to death by the millions pretty soon. or rather, y'all will be torturing them to death. i don't have any use for that product.

How many stories does local news have a elderly Americans confronted by violent criminals? How many of those times did those weaker individuals equalize their power by drawing a gun? Violent crime matters too.

We see numbers about gun violence, but of those how many were related to drugs or gangs?

Stand your ground has absolutely nothing to do with this case. The man was in his home, he was not in a public space. In addition to investigating his claim of self defense, the police or prosecutors might also have to consider the castle doctrine.

Of course you could be in another country where you get charged with assault because you stabbed a person that had broken into your home and assaulted you.

What exactly is it about the idea that you don't have to retreat if someone attempts to assault you in a public place that you find so appalling?

not many news stories on Elderly, and even fewer by drawing a gun.. the dude shot a woman who was knocking on his door.... she wasn't trying to break in, she wasn't causing a scene...

the only thing more dangerous than a person with a gun... is a person with a gun that has issues.

fluff banning guns... make bullets illegal, no second amendment issue... you're allowed be armed... nowhere does it state your allowed to own bullets.

Notice how I specifically did NOT mention anything about gun control? You pro-gun guys jumped straight to it as if someone was attacking your 2nd amendment rights. Chill out guys.

I mentioned, as SEVERAL OF YOU ALSO MENTIONED, that we have an issue with the people. A gun is a tool, and as we have seen in many other countries that, once again, have more gun ownership(in households) than we do, just having guns doesn't mean you're going to use it to kill someone. You're just more likely to in the US than in those other countries.

An yet you don't address perhaps the most important part of my post, let me put it here again for you.

actually, gun related homicide in US has been on a steady decline, contrary to what the media and the left want you to know,

as for your 15k is a high number (closer to 12k), it is. I am as pro-gun as you can get and yes, it is sickening to see people abuse them.

also here is an interesting stat : medical malpractice results in the death of 98,000 annually in the US.

you are over 8x more likely to die in a hospital due to a failed procedure than you are getting shot.



before we play judge on this, make sure we have all the details. we dont. we dont know where she was goin, where she was coming from at 1:30 AM. we dont know what the delay was from the accident at 1:30 to her knocking on the door (it had to have been a decent knock to wake someone up at 3:40)

we dont know if she had been drinking or partying which caused a crash (i am sure a toxicology report and autopsy were performed)


what we DO know is that the family is repeatedly, and intentionally fabricating the story to paint a false narrative in the media, that she got shot in the back of the head while retreating, when all evidence was very clear she got shot in the face.

we DO know that, according to the police, the man went to the police station and got questioned, a report was filed and he was let go. Investigation is in progress.

we also know that she got in a car crash, her phone was dead (would be interesting to see phone records to see if that story lines up as well), and she was 4 blocks from the accident. 4 blocks? why so far away?

we dont know what happened. but what we do know is that a life was lost, that is tragic. this has nothing to do with stand your ground.

That Washington Post article doesn't show any countries that have more guns than US per household.

The part where holding onto a gun gives people to do something they otherwise wouldn't, ie stand your ground instead of running. If someone is actually assaulting you and you have a gun, I'm not gonna argue that you don't have a right to defend yourself. It's when people 'think' they're being assaulted and end up blasting the person away when the whole situation could have been handled differently. THAT'S the part I have issues with.

http://www.theguardian.com/...wnership-gun-deaths-study

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-switzerland.htm

I can't find the article I read the last time we had this discussion, but I remember(or mis-remember) reading that the US didn't have the highest per-household gun ownership rate. I thought Switzerland and Norway were higher, but Switzerland appears to be a bit lower than the US.

maybe their guns are owned by the government and don't count as guns being owned by civilians because they're part of the military.

Excuse my sarcasm... However, looking at that list, here's what I discovered: The United States may be first on that list as far as gun ownership, but 5th on the list as far as percentage of gun related homicides. Here's the winners who beat out the United States for 1st place.

1. Brazil with 70.8% or 34,678 gun related homicides.
2. Colombia with 81.1% or 12,539 gun related homicides.
3. Mexico with 54.9% or 11,309 gun related homicides.
4. Venezuela with 79.5 or 11,115 gun related homicides.

They all share one thing in common too: All are south of the U.S. Border, so take your argument there.

Read the news report, watched the video. I'm not going to defend the shooter's position, since it doesn't make any sense to me sitting here.

But, the idea of going around the country and disarming law-abiding citizens and depriving them of their right to be armed is stupid in the extreme.

Casting aspersions on the many for the actions of the few, or the one is also pretty stupid.

As for the idiot claiming that gun killings in the US far outstrip the murder rates in other countries is worse than a damned lie, it's a statistic which can be twisted to show what you wish to show rather than the truth of the matter.

For example. 55 mph speed limits save lives. Because more people got killed when the speed limit was higher. NO, DUH!

The reason more people got killed at 70 wasn't the speed. The accidents occurred at the same relative frequency if you used the "miles driven" measurement rather than the speed.

More miles were driven at 70 than at 55, so considering that there may have been 10 deaths per 1000 miles driven as an average, the rate stayed the same at the higher rate of speed relative to the numbers of miles driven.

Statistics prove nothing unless they are based on a clear measurement base that assures that the data is not skewed by incorrectly calculating the solutions.

Oh, and this does not qualify under any stand your ground rules that I am aware of. She had not threatened, or behaved in a threatening manner, and was certainly not in the house as an intruder.

It was a murder, plain and simple and should be adjudicated as such.

we dont know this.

we dont know how she was acting, what she was doing.


as for the man feeling threatend, i challenge you to move to dearborn heights and live there for 7 years and when someone randomly knocks on your door (loud enough to wake you up) at 3:30 AM and you just walk to the door and welcome the into your home. see how that goes for you.

this neighborhood isnt your everyday stereotypical everybody gets along with everybody else and nobody would ever do anything to hurt you neighborhood.

we dont know what happened that night other than a girl got in a car accident at 1:30 and got shot at 3:40

the family's story is a fabrication of the truth, and the mans story has holes in it [no pun intended]

as this happened at the time it did the probability of eye witnesses is very low so likely we will never hear a 3rd party's story. however, there are many more details we can learn that will tell us a little more about it. im sure those will come shortly.

how many of those do you concider 1st world nations, how many are, or are on the verge of being considered 3rd world...

We do know that this is not stand your ground, as the man was in his home. This is either murder or justified homicide or self defense (possibly under the castle doctrine). This must be adjudicated in consideration of whether or not the man was threatened by word or action by the woman before he opened fire. Simply being on your porch does not necessarily give you the right to point a weapon at the individual. If she had a weapon, that's possibly a different story. If she was trying to break into the home, that's certainly a different story.

In this case, the police claim the man told them that the weapon accidentally discharged, but his lawyer is saying that he feels the shooting was justified. He may have been justified in approaching the door with a gun, but if it accidentally discharged, then I don't see how you can say it was a justified shooting. If it was an accident then he did not at the time intend to fire the weapon. The prosecutor is not ready to bring charges on the man yet and I think this is proper. The prosecutors need more evidence to decide what, if any, charges to bring. Justice is not being delayed in this case, but it is not an instantaneous event either. It takes time to figure out what justice really is and what charges a prosecutor believes they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/...while-searching-for-help/


While this is not a stand your ground case, you still have a duty to prove reasonable fear of death or bodily harm in stand your ground cases. Basically stand your ground laws were put in place to curb prosecutions because prosecutors said that someone could have retreated; legislators determined that people shouldn't have to retreat when confronted by a criminal or determine if they can retreat or not. You still have to prove a reasonable fear of death or harm. Stand your ground is not like the Castle Doctrine in which you are presumed to be in reasonable fear; you have to prove it.

So video games are not to blame....joe biden is

I've no idea what this has to do with a stand your ground law . . . pretty obvious that the dude shot her and then dumped her body somewhere, then tried to claim 'self defense' when it got pointed back at him. Tella is mixing his metaphores again. Besides, this is in Detroit, everything is wacked about detroit

For all intents and purposes... a good number of people misconstrue the meaning of the term “third world” to mean the underdeveloped nations of the world, when in fact the term originally meant the nations of the world that weren’t US-UK-NATO aligned (the First World) or USSR-Warsaw Pact-Chinese aligned (the Second World) during the Cold War. Somewhere along the way it turned into a term to describe a nation’s economic development.

TBQH though, I believe with the exception of Brazil… that Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela are third world countries. Brazil would be more of a second world country as even though most of their population is situated along the coast of their 3,287,597 sq. mi. country they’re largely industrialized and are maybe 120 million people behind the U.S. in terms of population.

guns factor into both the "accidents" and "self harm" categories on that list Dibs.

http://www.bloomberg.com/...c-fatalities-by-2015.html

[quote poster=Angel1; 27219; 504706]

Isn't this where the controversy lies? That self-defense argued you had to be in fear of your life and exhausted all other options before killing was justified. But under Stand Your ground, you merely need to "reasonably fear bodily harm" and you can kill someone. So if I think that guy is going to beat me up, its ok to murder him.

And once we've established that "ok" escalation, next time he won't plan to just beat me up, he'll make sure to bring a gun too.

We've essentially made it not just "ok" but almost the "expectation" that you should bring a gun to a fist-fight.

Talk about sensational journalism, start out the article with a supposed "eyewitness'" description of the events, then gloss over the fact that the victim's aunt wasn't actually at the scene.

[i]"This man just came to the door, by somebody just knocking? She didn't break in his house; she didn't break a window. What, you seen somebody on your porch and you just start shooting? And then you say it was accidental? That wasn't accidental; that wasn't accidental, no," says Bernita Spinks.[/i]

I wish they would prosecute the media for bullfluff like that.