“A suburban New York family’s happy Thanksgiving celebration turned into a horror when a man broke into their home and assaulted an elderly relative,” foxnews.com reports. “The family had just gone to bed Thursday when cops say Jeffrey Rice (above) slipped into the home in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island’s north shore through an unlocked door and grabbed a knife. Police said Rice then sneaked upstairs, where he attacked the homeowner’s 85-year-old aunt with his fists. The woman had just fallen asleep in a bedroom she was sharing with her 7-year-old grandniece, the daughter of the 37-year-old homeowner and his wife.”
Unless you’re in a Hollywood movie, you have a greater chance of winning the lottery than being the victim of a random home invasion, especially one by a whack job. But if such a thing did occur, you’d probably want to be armed in defense of yourself and your loved ones. Turns out that one member of the Long Island family in question was armed, just not ballistically.
“My daughter was in the room and escaped, ran downstairs and told my in-laws to call 911, which I had already done from upstairs,” she said.
The woman said she and her husband tried to grab the knife. She said they eventually subdued the intruder with the help of her brother and brother-in-law.
“He was definitely on drugs, maybe PCP or something,” she told a local TV station. “He was completely hallucinating. He took some swings at my husband. Our bed is shattered in our room and, you know, my husband had a baseball bat.”
People who favor civilian disarmament would consider this family lucky — in the sense that the lack of a firearm meant that no one was shot. People who cherish their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms would also consider the family lucky — in the sense that the psycho didn’t murder any family members before the good guys with guns arrived.
Equally, I reckon most pro-gun folks would rue the day said disturbed individual wasn’t shot. Sad, perhaps, but true. And an entirely defensible position, at least legally.
But let’s make drug use ok, ok?
How about, if you’re caught dealing (literally on video or some adjudicated irrefutable proof) and you ain’t “using” we cut off one of your limbs (your choice).
One guy went nuts, so we should outlaw it for everyone? If we followed your logic guns would have been outlawed 100 years ago.
When you drill down the core of the thought process there is 0 difference between gun-controllers (grabbers) and prohibitionists. The logic is identical. Really the only difference is what they want to have control over.
Oh? So now mind altering drugs are a natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected right? This is why libertarians will never control this country, they have no clue.
@Stan
So tell all the drug-dealing gangs, all the corpses built into walls, all the victims of asset forfeiture, and all the homeowners maimed or killed by the local SWAT team, that you have a clue.
“So now mind altering drugs are a natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected right?”
You ask this question backwards. The real question is “What business of the government is it which mind altering substances people may or may not legally use if they harm no one else and damage no property that is not their own?” The real question is where the power of the state stops. What you do with your own body sure as fuck isn’t any of their business. You can get all transgendered now and get “extra” rights but don’t you dare light up that doobie or we’ll put you in the slammer. Caffeine, sugar, nicotine and alcohol are all legal. Why is the other stuff illegal? Oh, because big daddy government knows what’s good for you? Fuck that. Want them to help you wipe your ass too?
The answer is that it’s not any of the government’s business if someone wants to eat, smoke, snort or inject something until they harm another person or another person’s property. The government making such things their business has a proven track record of abysmal failure and an associated loss of civil rights for every single person in the country.
Consider this: We’ve basically shredded the Bill of Rights under the guise of the “War on Drugs” and Prohibition. The 2A, 4A, 5A, 6A and 8A are all virtually meaningless as soon as the word “drugs” comes up. The NFA came from Prohibition and the GCA and GOPA provisions we all hate came from the WoD. On top of that we’ve spent trillions, enriched drug lords, created our own gang problem, turned our Southern neighbors into fucking war zones and for what? Every year drugs get cheaper and more pure at street level while new drugs hit the market. The cops shut down a heroin ring and an oxy ring out of Canada picks up the slack while the original organization shifts to meth or something else to make up for the losses on smack.
You think you have rights? Give me your address and when the cops show up based on my anonymous tip you’ll find out differently. Ever heard of “civil asset forfeiture”? Here’s what it means: having a large amount of liquid assets (“large” to be determined by your average dumbfuck beat cop) is grounds for confiscating all your liquid assets that they can find. Want them back? Sure, you can get 40-50% back… after you pay double that in court fees and sign an NDA. Sounds legit right? Welcome to the WoD son. You have no rights. The state is supreme but thank fucking Christ no one ever lights up a joint anymore and the kiddies don’t even know what meth or coke are!
We’re fucking over our neighbors, spending money we don’t have on interdiction, incarceration, courts etc., upping our murder and other violent crime rates, shredding citizens’ rights while creating criminal organizations with so much wealth it would make Solomon blush. All in the name of war that we quite literally cannot ever win because it’s a fight against human nature.
That’s dumb as fuck and anyone who believes it’s a good idea needs their head carefully examined to find the safest way to remove it from their asshole.
Strych9 wins the Intertubez for the year!!!
Look, I have never used and have absolutely ZERO interest in using marijuana, PCP, crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, etc. In fact I think it is exceedingly stupid and foolish to use any of those substances. Nevertheless, I do NOT support government treating possession, distribution, or use of those substances as a criminal activity.
Rather than spending trillions of dollars trying to prosecute the possession, distribution, or use of those substances, why not create a giant account, funded through voluntary donations, that pays for education/prevention and treatment programs? That would be light years more productive than our current resource black hole that is “illegal narcotics” criminalization.
uncommon:
You’ll never get drug use down to 0. In fact you probably can’t cut it by 50% because, as I said, seeking altered states of consciousness is a human trait.
What you can do is not make the problem worse which is what were doing. Legalize the drugs, tax them at a rational rate and .gov makes money instead of wasting yours and mine. Drug test welfare recipients. Piss dirty? No money for six months. Sure, it’s legal to use drugs but, like drinking at work, you do that shit on your own time and dime, not someone else’s.
People whine [Insert whiny, nasal voice here] “But… but… but it will be super expensive when everyone’s addicted!”
Bull-fucking-shit. How many people would run out and buy some needles and heroin or crack and pipe if it were legal tomorrow? The people already doing the drugs and virtually no one else. On top of that, when it comes to the derelicts you’re already paying for them twice or three times. First you pay for the welfare for them to have a house and clothes and a cell phone and food and money for the dope. Then you pay when the go to rehab. If you’re really lucky and run the inside straight you get to pay for both of those plus for their arrest, sentencing and incarceration before they go to court ordered rehab. Two of those three costs would be eliminated by legalizing drugs and denying welfare to dope users.
I don’t support people using drugs but I won’t deny them the freedom to make choices. Even if those choices are bad ones that I don’t agree with they still have the right to make them. You have the right to jump out a perfectly good airplane on Saturdays too. In both cases, knock yourself out. Just don’t expect me to pay for it.
Then comes the argument that drug user hurt other people. No, drug use only increases the statistical likelihood that you might harm another person to feed your habit. The same argument could be made against cars or planes. You can’t harm another person with a car or a plane without access to one, ergo access to such a contraption infinitely increases the odds that you harm someone with it.
Hey, statists gonna state and unthinking drones gonna unthinkingly drone. Not much you can do about it other than tell the former to fuck off and hope the latter wise up when there’s no one there holding their hand and wiping their nose for them.
” If we followed your logic guns would have been outlawed 100 years ago.”
Or, more to the point, alcohol would have been outlawed 100 years ago…no, wait…but that was different because the prohibition didn’t work, it only made criminals rich… no, wait…
When was the last time you used PCP? If not, why not?
The last time I used PCP?
Never.
Why not?
Because I saw what happened to Rodney King. That shit was on TV son. Those cops beat his ass but good.
In other words: I’m not fucking stupid enough to get high on Phencyclidine. I don’t need a law to tell me not to use that shit. Ditto meth, heroin, crack etc. If nothing else those drugs are evolution in action, thinning out the stupid and the weak via OD so that our species gets stronger.
But hey I don’t drink coffee either.
Non sequitur. Firearms and mind altering drugs are not comparable at all. Proper use of firearms can save lives and property. Traditional use of illicit drugs, i.e., to get stoned, only ruins or extinguishes lives, never saves them. See? That’s how logical gun-owners think. But, when all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Do you own your body or not? IF you do, then the government has no business telling you what to put in it. And yes, drug use is protected by the 9th and 10th Amendments. No where in the Constitution will you find any grant of authority to the Federal government to regulate what is used to self medicate.
It simply isn’t relevant whether drugs banned by Federal legislation “save lives” or not. Bananas don’t save lives, but merely enhance them. Cannabis should not have been banned on no evidence, and in the face of the fact (known by every policeman on the beat back then) that alcohol, not cannabis, causes the fights, auto crashes, wife beatings, and failed livers, It really is that simple. Instead “we” let the physicians of America prescribe masses of Oxycontin, but we jail people for cannabis:? It makes no sense when you view those two realities together in view.
As for the government deciding what people consume (specifically cannabis v. alcohol) I’ll leave the “ban it” crowed the same lyric I leave for General Petraeus and his gun bull: “You can’t even run your own life, I’ll be damned if you’ll run mine.”
If you go back and read the minutes for the Marijuana (they spelled it differently) Tax Stamp Act you’ll find that the “evidence” was a bunch of racists claiming that “ni**ers and sp*cs” got high and raped white women.
Such language was freely used on the floors of both the House and the Senate to support passing that abortion of a law.
Traditional use of drugs typically starts out as medical uses…
So you know for a fact that no life saving or enhancing device or practice was ever created or perfected by someone under the influence?
Also “traditional use and “proper use”
Now you are parroting antis and Fudds.
No one is suggesting, “Hey, shoot your smack, defecate on the sidewalk and rob some old lady to buy your next hit, totally legal and okay!” Just as none of us would ever suggest or condone, “Hey, load your M240, shoot out the windows of your downtown and hold up a pizza place to pay for your ammo!”
But if you are being safe on your own property, or property you are on with permission to use, don’t you still want the freedom to choose to experience that expensive endorphin rush from that magical 240 trigger time?
Punish the crime, and the criminal, not the tools he/she used.
WHyus is defending DEALERS not USERS or he just didn’t read my post.
AND YES, IF YOUR GOAL IS TO ENSLAVE PEOPLE WHO DO STUPID AND OTHERWISE CRIMINAL ACTS (INCLUDING MURDER) TO OBTAIN YOUR PRODUCT THEN YOU NEED TO HAVE SH_T CHOPPED OFF OF YOU PER PROVEN OFFENSE.
China did it 500 years ago and it kept them from being a black hole opium den, but not before being enslaved by Japan.
This is the exact same logic that liberals use to try and infringe on your right to bear arms. No victim- no crime. Unless you’ve harmed a person or property you should be able to do whatever the hell you want. I’d love to hear you rationally defend your dipshit position.
omg the biggest fallacy around is that it is a victim-less crime. from property crime to violent crime, drugs are in their orbit. the trouble is that the drugs are 1)marketed to youth to ensure a product pipeline; 2)made with expediency to maximize profit, e.g. cut or created with all kinds of chemicals.
so when I see a guy OD on carfentynel and takes 8 Narcan to revive I see a serious public health and safety issue.
@ John E> False. No victim, no crime. If someone robs you to pay for their heroin, they have committed a crime. Unless they have injured someone else, they should be free to ruin their lives/ bodies in piece. Alcohol is a drug, caffeine is a drug, etc. Politicians and lobbyists determine arbitrarily which substances are legal and which are not, and luckily they have many people like you who will blindly believe their propaganda. I don’t do drugs or drink and likely never would (open to using medical marijuana) but I recognize that I myself don’t have the right to forcibly prevent someone from using drugs, and thus I don’t have the ability to delegate that right to the gov.
So consider the possibility that if addicts don’t need to procure drugs from illicit sources and can get purer, regulated, legal drugs for less money than illicit ones perhaps we would see not only a decline in crimes associated with drug dependence but ODs as well.
Drugs are already illegal, yet people still use them. Weird huh? Kind of like how criminals still have guns despite strong gun control laws.
History teaches us that outlawing things (e.g. alcohol) can have many bad side effects. Things were arguably worse during prohibition. People still used alcohol and organized crime came about to fill in the black market desire for alcohol. People were put in jail for committing victimless “crimes”. It’s disgusting.
The war on drugs also has many bad side effects. Cartels are thriving because there is (and always will be) a strong demand for their goods. We can’t throw enough money at the “problem” to stop it. While I agree that the use of certain drugs is a bad thing for individuals and for society, I think our war against these drugs just makes it worse.
Damn! Why do most gun-owners have mush for brains? “You should be able to do whatever you want, as long as you don’t hurt anyone” says the deep thinker.
Public sex? Public urination? Public smoking of CIGARETTES? Driving with your radio blasting at 120dB? Sleeping on someone’s lawn? Bathing in a public fountain?
None of that hurts anyone. So what’s wrong with doing what I want? I don’t expect a proper answer because, well because you probably have gun-owner’s disease. There I said it.
Drugs were once thought constitutional because of the “pursuit of happiness.” Some people consider getting high their happiness. I don’t judge just don’t mess with me and mine. Both Prohibitionists and gun grabbers want to control the same thing people. They aren’t trying to control objects they want to control the citizenry.
Public sex is a societal morality issue. The individual witnessing the act is harmed.
Public urination is also a societal morality issue, a health risk, and the smell is awful, anyone coming in contact with the results is harmed.
Public smoking of cigarettes is a health risk to individuals other than the smoker, anyone exposed is harmed.
Loud radio is disturbing to those within earshot, they are harmed.
Sleeping on my lawn violates my property rights and I am harmed.
Bathing in public fountain creates a health risk as well as a need for increased sanitation, society as a whole is harmed.
Doing drugs harms the user, period. If they commit some crime to obtain, or while under the influence of, that’s the user’s fault. Not the drug’s.
Sleeping on someone else’s property doesn’t hurt anyone…
Bwahahahha…
That’s what you call, a clue.
“Public sex is a societal morality issue. The individual witnessing the act is harmed.”
That depends on the society and the person witnessing the act. Native American children regularly witnessed their parents having sex and it didn’t fuck them up none. The same is certainly true of just about every society if you go back far enough in time. Most Marines wouldn’t be harmed by witnessing such a thing either.
This is a cultural construct and Americans, by and large, are prudes about it. Nudity is part of advertising in Europe and no one screams that titties on a billboard for Pilsner Urquell is fucking up the youth because the societal constructs of what is acceptable are different.
Sleeping on someone’s lawn is completely different. No one is harmed by this act. Unless the person is in a coma it’s not going to harm the grass. This is a property rights issue and private property belonging to you comes with certain privileges. Privileges like the ability to tell people to get the hell out for any reason you want. Sleeping on your lawn, wearing white after labor day, a pink shirt, being queer, having a glass eye, owning a dog or cat, or just looking at you funny… none of them matter. It’s your property and you can do with it what you wish generally speaking including banning pretty much anyone you like from it.
All those things are rude but not really dangerous… Also sounds like you’ve never been to Mardi Gras.. Ha but I’m in the as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else why should anyone else care? If I smoke a joint in my house that I paid for why the hell can you tell me I can’t? I don’t tell you what tv show to watch or how much sugar you can eat what’s the difference?
People already speed, so let’s not have speed limits!!! That’s how stupid your post is.
Sounds like a plan. The only reason speed limits exist is to raise money for the government, they have nothing to do with safety.
Face it, you are lost without a daddy in government to tell you how to live. Grow up and be a man.
Good idea. Peeking down into the speedometer is much more dangerous than driving a bit faster.
It’s been proven most people drive at a speed limit that they feel comfortable with.. Unless you run over somebody drive as fast as you want doesn’t affect me.. Look at the autobahn it is actually really safe
Joe R. – thanks for reminding us what someone with ruthless injudiciousness would do.
Agree.
Drugs should be free. Heroin, PCP, coke, oxy, everything. Not just legal. Free.
That will take the profit out of drug sales and distribution and keep the worst elements of society pacified, so the good people can go back to work and build something, and the cops can go back to shaking down hookers.
The cops in places like Atlantic city like their hookers shaking but I think that’s from the cops going down… never mind.
Besides, the world’s oldest profession should be legal as well. What happens between consenting adults ain’t no .gov business either.
I’ve gotten questioned in the past why I would carry to holiday events like dinners at the anti in-laws or pageants or the local xmas parade.
When I carry every other day of the year why would leaving it home or in the safe during a period in which people are experiencing prolonged emotional stressors, depression, loneliness, anxiety, etc… be the appropriate time to disarm?
Even if you don’t carry the rest of the year you should be tooled like Rambo during the holidays because people are bat-shit crazy and Santa makes them hella crazier.
I feel carrying an M-60 with the belt wrapped around your arm might be a bit overkill.
Dat bow tho…
Unless you’re in a Hollywood movie, you have a greater chance of winning the lottery than being the victim of a random home invasion
I’m not sure what a “random home invasion” might be, compared with a “non-random home invasion,” but this report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that there are a more movie stars in America than you’ve assumed.
“An estimated 3.7 million burglaries occurred each year on average from 2003 to 2007. A household member was present in roughly 1 million burglaries and became victims of violent crimes in 266,560 burglaries.”
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/vdhb.pdf
Even though the stats aren’t very cheerful, it’s not the odds, it’s the stakes.
Not sure how accurate the stat is, but I read that one has a 20% chance of experiencing a home invasion over a lifetime. If true, that is certainly a bit different from a lottery ticket!!!
I’d religiously buy lottery tickets with them odds
Mark,
Let us assume that there are approximately 100 million households in the United States. If we use a simple definition of “home invasion” to mean an intruder comes into your home when someone is home (regardless of whether or not the intruder demonstrates any capacity for violence against the home occupant), Ralph’s Bureau of Justice statistic of 1 million such events annually means that roughly one in 100 homes have an intruder enter the home while an occupant is in the home. If you figure that the average person lives to be 70 years old and those events are spread evenly across all communities, then there is a 70 in 100 chance that a home occupant will experience a “home invasion” in their lifetime.
Of course such a simple definition of a “home invasion” will occur much more frequently in some communities compared to others. Further, your particular odds of being a home occupant during a home invasion depends on how often you are a home occupant.
Then we have the Bureau of Justice statistic that 266,000 home invasions perpetrated a violent crime against a home occupant. That is roughly 1/4 of the previous statistic.
I would simply direct you to consider how many of your neighbors, friends, and relatives have been victims of home invasions over the course of their lives. Do you know at least 100 neighbors, friends, and relatives? How many of them experienced home invasions? That gives you some sense of how often such events occur.
I know three. In one case, the homeowner (in an upscale town on Cape Cod) was beaten very badly. In another, the woman in NYC was raped. In the third, the homeowner and his daughter in Brooklyn slept through the whole damn thing.
Damn Ralph that’s some depressing dope right there.
A happier story: A guy in Santa Fe broke into a woman’s house armed with a knife. He forced her into her bedroom where he made it clear that he was going to rape her. Unfortunately for him she kept a 9mm under the pillow. She busted him twice in the grape. DRT. Shoulda raped her in the living room I guess.
Turns out his DNA solved half a dozen other rapes and two rape+murders.
Of course the libbies in Santa Fe cried for the dead guy and gnashed their teeth about gun control and how terrible it was that some poor rapist/murderer got dirt napped. The sane people silently hoped the boatman dropped that fuckers soul in the middle of the river with a weight around his (it’s?) feet.
That’s why we home carry. 100% of home invasions happen where?
A firearm would not have made much difference in this case. Unless you expect a sleeping 85 year old woman to defend herself. The husband with the ballbat was not injured and the suspect was subdued for the government employees to come take away. Locking the backdoor would have been smarter.
I believe sometime in the past couple of weeks TTAG posted a story of a man in his 80’s who defended himself in his bedroom with a .22 cal pistol or revolver that he had stashed in his bedside table 35 years prior to the invasion that had never been used before. Sorry, no link.
Of course it had never been used before. Just like most of us, the old guy couldn’t find twenty-two ammo.
More likely to win the lottery than to have home invaded?
WTF are you talking about? The 5-dollar wins?
Cold Spring Harbor is a very wealthy town. Big houses, estates, woods, lots of potential targets and hiding places as well. Owner should have locked door, owned decent size dog, and as discussed at length in yesterday’s postings, also owned a shotgun. Shotgun nice and legal in NY.
“Equally, I reckon most pro-gun folks would rue the day said disturbed individual wasn’t shot.” RF
Not sad, but very true. We do not want there to be a “next” victim for any whack-job.
I found that line by RF, “Equally, I reckon most pro-gun folks would rue the day said disturbed individual wasn’t shot. Sad, perhaps, but true. And an entirely defensible position, at least legally,” incredibly offensive. I, least, would not rue the day if the disturbed individual was taken into custody without severe injury (and without injuring me and mine).
I simply don’t want to be forced to create that outcome myself. If someone else wants to take the risk, that’s fine with me.
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