Lucky he didn't die. Many different studies have shown that guns in the house will most likely be used on the people living in the house.

EVERYONE knows you run a much higher risk of getting shot if you live in a gun house.
It's simple common sense.
That's not a statement in support of it or in opposition, just a proven fact.

If the city wasn't such a dump she probably would not feel the need to have a gun. Have you driven down Terra Bella lately a real dumping ground . I wish for a speedy recovery to the person who got shot

Works for me. Don't be so scared BB. Besides as the movie line says "You'll shoot you're eye out with that thing"...or your wife, or your kid, or your kid will pull it out of your wife's purse in Walmart and shoot her, or...

The simple fact of the matter is that you're less safe and more likely to be shot if you're with a gun, anecdotal examples aside, no sane thinker can refute it. No plausible studies have refuted it.

> Terra Bella lately a real dumping ground

Um... Terra Bella Ave *is* a real dumping ground. The city recycling station has been there for at least the last 15 years...

I'm not against guns by any means.

But I am for some common sense.

Although I am glad that I could own one if I had a need to, there are so many fallacies and myths regarding guns as home or personal defense.

Like this situation. It's a lot easier to miss than one thinks. And if you miss, one has to think about where the bullet goes.

I don't own a gun for personal or home defense because it's just not safe. If I lived on three acres in the woods I probably would keep a rifle around. But here, in urban/suburban areas, it just makes no sense at all.

As for other arguments like hunting small game in case of a disaster situation, an extended power outage, a bad earthquake, or a zombie apocalypse..... You wouldn't have anything to eat if you proposed to go hunting squirrel or raccoon or geese with any of the popular guns.

My point is... there's just no reason to own a gun in this city. You're better off with a pellet gun or a bb gun to scare off critters or eat squirrel chili, and you're better off taking a good self-defense class to protect your personal safety; and you're better off with a baseball bat in the corner of your bedroom to protect your home. Even your imagined assailant stands a good chance of missing you in an armed robbery unless they have automatic weapons (which again, there's no real need for unless you are at war), or they have you point-blank in your sleep (in which case your personal arms do you no good).

Besides, there's always tazers and spray.

And the tried and true method of going for their crotch (male or female).

I'm a renter. I live in an apartment. It's just not safe to have a gun about. I'm likelier to hurt someone I didn't intend to hurt in such close quarters.

Sorry for the rant. Like I said, I have zero issues with firearms; just their misuse. And we just don't treat them with the respect and sense that we treat... I dunno... a sawzall or a sharp kitchen knife or any of a plethora of other valid and useful tools.

Seems like a story that might need a bit more investigation. Also, to the commenters above, it's also worth noting that a home with a gun is less likely to be successfully robbed.

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

The "Gun Issue" is what philosopher Ken Wilber refers to as a "wicked problem," because it is a many-headed hydra that can't easily be encompassed into a simple answer. People with strong opinions on BOTH sides will oversimplify it and argue from a limited perspective they believe to be accurate.

It does seem to be the case that if you have a gun in the house it is more likely to be used against you or someone you love than a legit "bad guy." But correlation doesn't prove causality. It may also be that people with guns in the house drink more (70% of violent crime is alcohol-related), or are more prone to violence themselves. These are just some possible explanations. In these cases, I'm pretty confident that if I choose to have a gun in my house I'm unlikely to ever use it except in a legitimately threatening situation. Certainly, my experience with all my friends who are gun owners is I'm generally not at all concerned for their (or my) safety.

Of course, among those who decided to comment, we have one who decided to project their unhappiness with the city itself (and who elsewhere expressed the racialized view that MV is going down the tubes because of all the "low lifes you have put a welcome mat out for"). We also have a commenter who brands as "snowflakes" anyone who points out the data I mentioned above.

Firearms are used by 3 million people every year to defend them self's.

Here is a google search, for the "Scary Assault Rifle" that the left wants to ban, showing, in part, what the Second Amendment is about.
Web Link

If you need the police and they are 10 minutes away, only a firearm in your hands can defend your life and your loved ones till the police arrive.


A talking point is, "The simple fact of the matter is that you're less safe and more likely to be shot if you're with a gun,"
Not True!

Just to clarify and reiterate: by no means am I anti-gun.

I'm just saying... I do go to the range often enough to know how many holes I put in the center of the target and how many I don't. Because they're rentals and because I don't own any, I've had the opportunity to fire many types of arms.

Again, in a dense rental area, I just don't think it makes sense for me to own one.

And once again, I am only speaking of my own observations and choices; because I full respect other people's right to make their own observations and choices. I don't particularly live in fear of gun violence one way or another.

But as a personal preference, I prefer open carry over concealed carry, and I prefer gunracks in your pickup truck. (I grew up in a less urban area, by the way). If I know you're carrying and I don't feel comfortable with how you behave, I'll just go somewhere else. No big deal.

"If the city wasn't such a dump?"

Seriously, folks, get some perspective. The Mountain View - Sunnyvale - Santa Clara area is one of the safest places in the entire country. If you feel that you have to have a gun in Mountain View, then you must think you need an armored personnel carrier to drive through Stockton.

A gun in the home is 11 times more likely to harm a loved one than be used in self defense

[Post removed due to promoting a website]

Do me a favor, folks. If you have a gun in the house for protection, and like this foolish lady you think you are encountering an intruder, shout a warning first like "I have a gun! Lave or I will use it" as loud as you can before actually pulling the trigger on someone.

Like her, you may other wise regret it, and hopefully not REALLY regret it as she also did.

"Shoot first, ask questions later." has always been a bad idea.



P.S....Teflon Trump, seek professional help. G'day.

2nd amendment was ratified nearly 250 years ago because the country had NO military and NO local law enforcement, it is no longer relevant but has been hijacked by the NRA gun lobby with great success. However the constitution’s emoluments clause IS relevant, more so than ever. I know it’s a big word. Google it. No point in having that debate here.

@Sally. We DO have the right to tell you you can’t have a gun. We can say what we like. I am surprised s constitutional scholar like yourself is not familiar with the first amendment.

Fondle that gun every night. Just don't tell me it makes you LESS likely to be shot because that's an abject lie. It's like trying to say the sun isn't bright then trying to defend that statement.
But again by all means, buy them, collect them, polish and clean them, talk about them with your friend, scream "Nobody will take my precious" all night long. It's all good by me.

Do whatever brings you joy or makes you less afraid in a world you may find scary. I support you in this, but know that you're more likely to be shot if you are always around guns, that goes without question.

“about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help”.
Web Link

If guns made us safer the statistics would reflect that, but they do not.

President Obama spent $10 million of our tax dollars and found that there are 500,000 to 3 million defensive gun uses per year (DGU also includes showing a firearm to a criminal who then runs away)

Enclosed below, is the link to this detailed report. No where in it states that guns in your home, will be 11 times more dangerous than those homes without guns. This is is from President Obama own report.

1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

3. Mass shootings and accidental firearm deaths account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths, and both are declining:
“The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths. Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” The report also notes, “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

4. “Interventions” (i.e, gun control) such as background checks, so-called assault rifle bans and gun-free zones produce “mixed” results:
“Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.” The report could not conclude whether “passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.”

5. Gun buyback/turn-in programs are “ineffective” in reducing crime:
“There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).”

6. Stolen guns and retail/gun show purchases account for very little crime:
“More recent prisoner surveys suggest that stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals. … According to a 1997 survey of inmates, approximately 70 percent of the guns used or possess by criminals at the time of their arrest came from family or friends, drug dealers, street purchases, or the underground market.”

7. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are not homicides, but suicides:
“Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.”


Web Link

Get a mini crossbow

"Where’s my musket???" above appears blissfully unaware of how thoroughly the second amendment has been upheld and reconfirmed by high US courts in RECENT decades as protecting individual firearm possession generally.

This notion that the US Constitution is somehow obsolete because it's "old," or that we all should interpret it as WE want to, is among the symptoms of today's moral narcissism epidemic.

Maybe Council member Abe-Koga should follow what the state of Maine has done. Success here, tighter restrictions only mean that law abiding citizens will be hurt. Criminals never obey the laws.



Maine has officially topped the ‘safest states’ rankings after they rolled back their strict gun laws about four years ago.

Maine Examiner reports:

Political News
Maine Rolls Back Gun Laws, Now Deemed ‘Safest State’
Keely Sharp September 3, 2019 No Comments

Maine has officially topped the ‘safest states’ rankings after they rolled back their strict gun laws about four years ago.

The state passed a “Constitutional Carry” law in 2015, which ultimately allows residents to conceal carry their firearm without first having a concealed carry license. Of course there was opposition, mainly from Democrats, that the law would be dangerous and put children at risk. One representative even stated that it would make residents afraid to go into public or work.

Maine Examiner reports:


Another state representative suggested the law would lead to violent criminals with recent arrests and convictions legally carrying handguns.

Jokes on them though! Now that more people carry, quality of life has been better and safer. The state has officially been named the safest state in the United States of America by the US News and World Report’s public safety rankings.

Putting the rights of Mainers ahead of the objections of opponents, Governor Paul LePage signed the bill sponsored by Senator Eric Brakey of Auburn after it won bipartisan approval in the Maine House and Senate

Ranking as the top safest state for violent crime and fourth for property crime, Maine edges out another New England state, Vermont, for the top spot. Of note, Vermont also is a “Constitutional Carry” state. New Hampshire ranks third in the national rankings, giving New England all three of the top spots in the nation.

Web Link

sooooooooooooooo lame.... posting a link to a bogus 'news' site.

Sally posted a link to bogus site maineexaminer - created by the head of the Maine GOP. Hilarity ensues...



Bangor Daily News:

" February 16, 2018 5:35 pm
Updated: February 16, 2018 6:09 pm
AUGUSTA, Maine — A top Maine Republican Party official admitted to state ethics watchdogs that he is behind a once-anonymous website that may have helped tip a 2017 mayoral race in Lewiston, but he said it was “not related” to his work for the party.

The argument from Jason Savage, the state party’s executive director, comes after Democrats requested an ethics investigation into the Maine Examiner last month, but his lawyer argues that he wasn’t required to report his work."


That's really pathetic. Or maybe just total ignorance on Sally's part.

Either way, clearly her posts are invalid.

Sally also cherry picks and exaggerates from a single study - for example she claims a 300,000 number when the study clearly states that the number could be 108,000 or lower.

She of course leaves out many conclusions:

"Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury.

For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use

(Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995)."



Either way, clearly her posts are invalid.

More on the bogus link from Sally - the creator of the lies on the website she got sucked in on without any critical thinking:

"The Maine Republican Party has struggled to explain the numerous reports that found a mountain of convincing evidence tying Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine Republican Party, to the anonymous fake news website Maine Examiner.

On Wednesday, Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Nemitz revealed that Savage owes Maine Revenue Service more than $11,000 in unpaid income taxes and fines and has had 16 tax liens recorded against him since 1999."


Not only is the creep ethically 'challenged', he's a deadbeat.

ie.. Republican.