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[Arx]

Not so much midgets as holes in the ground, really.

[penguinofhonor]

.

[mainiac]

During my junior year at college there was an incident where a student was mugged.  The mugger was hiding in a tree.  When the student walked underneath the tree, the mugger jumped out of the tree and hit them with a two by four.

I do not know what lessons we should draw from this incident but I feel it is of crucial importance.

[Sheb]

I do not know what lessons we should draw from this incident but I feel it is of crucial importance.

That both parties are terrible, and not voting is the only way forward.

[mainiac]

Neither party is willing to talk about the menace that trees pose to students!

Durken Thundershield 2016!

[Frumple]

You lie! The republican party has staunchly pressed forward in persecuting a program for culling the arboreal hordes, regardless of the negative consequences! They'll damn the ecosystems of the entire western hemisphere to defend the logging prospects of upcoming graduates! Vote red to see the trees dead!

[mainiac]

Oh yeah they talk about deforestation but how many bills have they passed to allow for concealed chainsaws?

[WealthyRadish]

"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of trees and grass, but by saws and pyramids."

-Ben "Lumberjack" Carson

[Shadowlord]

Because the average woman is 6 ft shorter than the average man

Stop right there, criminal scum!

(How exactly would Thumbelina hold a gun?)

[smjjames]

I'd rather not be the sort of self-absorbed ass that assumes every person they happen across is as interested in them and their shit as they are?

Self preservation instincts are synonymous to narcissism with you?

Except, k'now, lack of availability. And I gotta say, if I had to choose between getting into a shootout with a mugger who also had a gun versus running the hell away from one who had a knife or table leg or whatever... I know which situation I'd rather be in.

In a situation where I cannot run the hell away I'd take having a fighting chance over being at my attacker's mercy

Well I'm not 100 kilos but I do tend to be walking down the street at night & I don't particularly want to be shot at or have a gun pulled on me. I'd actually rather be unarmed, I'm not a woman but I don't see why you think that makes a heck of a difference to your question, guys do get mugged as well.

Because the average woman is 6 ft shorter than the average man and half as heavy, can't run away or fight as unless their attacker's been doing too much drugs they will be in better shape and better strength. Guns are pretty good equalizers in that regard. I suppose it's a matter of opinion; I do not have the option of legally being armed but would have appreciated it in the past, less so now. And yeah sure guys get mugged but guys have an easier time getting out of muggings and not getting into them in the first place. They don't walk around with as much stuff to mug outside of city centres where all the police are and what stuff they've got worth jacking is not worth fighting some big bloke over. Snatch a handbag, don't require much effort and you've just nabbed a phone, bag, purse and lol, if you kept a gun in there they're pawning that too xD
Of all the muggings of women in my family the three most notable ones, one was solved by wrestling a knife from a weak junkie, one was solved by tricking the mugger into thinking she only had a fiver and the last jumped into a river leaving a very shocked mugger behind and a story which the police just loved. There was also a stalker who panicked and up and run when she started loudly shouting down the phone there was some fucking mug trailing her
For guys? Nah, step 1 to not getting mugged for a guy is just look as big and poor as fucking possible and step 2 is bring some m8s

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

WHEN WILL OBAMA END THIS SICK MADNESS?

6 ft shorter on average? You fail at metric conversions? Men would either have to be 10 ft on average or women 5inches on average.

[Twi]

I'm surprised no one's pointed out the retrospectively obvious. Which is that they meant six inches shorter, not six feet.

[TheBiggerFish]

I'm surprised no one's pointed out the retrospectively obvious. Which is that they meant six inches shorter, not six feet.

I guess we don't always look in hindsight, huh?

[Reelya]

Because the average woman is 6 ft shorter than the average man and half as heavy, can't run away or fight as unless their attacker's been doing too much drugs they will be in better shape and better strength. Guns are pretty good equalizers in that regard. I suppose it's a matter of opinion;

It's not really a matter of opinion. Let's say the debate is: "more guns, do they make women safer and equalize things?". There are plenty of statistics on gun crime and gender, and none of them back up that guns in general, or even guns in the hands of women make women safer:

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/24/%E2%80%9Cwhere_there_are_more_guns_more_women_die%E2%80%9D_a_harvard_public_health_expert_breaks_down_the_data_on_firearms_and_womens_safety/

“The most consistent evidence that we have comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey. And what you see in National Crime Victimization Survey is that gun use in self-defense is a very rare event.”
...
This isn’t the first time a pro-gun lawmaker has argued that guns make women safer, despite consistent evidence showing a deadly correlation between firearms and violence against women. Women in the United States are 11 times more likely to be murdered with guns than women in other high-income countries. The presence of a firearm during a domestic violence incident increases the likelihood of a homicide by 500 percent.

The National Crime Victimization Survey shows that guns used in self-defense, by both genders, is a rare event, and it's the sort of thing you're going to remember for the survey, isn't it, that you had to pull a gun on someone to save your life?

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/having-a-gun-in-the-house-doesnt-make-a-woman-safer/284022/

A recent meta-analysis concluded what many people already knew: the availability of firearms is a strong risk factor for both homicide and suicide. But the study came to another conclusion that is rarely mentioned in the gun control debate: females are uniquely impacted by the availability of a firearm. Indeed, the study found that women with access to firearms become homicide victims at significantly higher rates than men.
...
Women in the United States account for 84 percent of all female firearm victims in the developed world, even though they make up only a third of the developed world’s female population.

[Powder Miner]

Where's the Atlantic article's source for that, by the way? I can't find it and I'd like to read it.

[wierd]

IIRC, that is not the major argument.

It is more along the lines of this:

In a society where there is a reasonably high chance that most people will be carrying a firearm in a concealed fashion, the perception of risk felt by a criminal offender will increase, which psychologically deturs crime.

Naturally, this would only work if two things are true.

1) lots of people have concealed weapons and know how to use them
2) People are willing and able to use them when a crime is comitted against them.

As you pointed out, most people dont respond with focused, skilled gunfire when assaulted or robbed. This means that the act of carrying a gun as a psych deturrent against crime fails, because the criminals know that they wont get shot.

The gun nutters want everyone to conceal carry to solve this problem.

The gun control nutters say that there is no benefit (or even potential benefit) fo concealed carry,  and it needs to be abolished because "guns are scary."

The middle ground is that carrying a concealed weapon, and being proficient in its proper and safe use makes the wearer feel more secure in thier person, even if they are statistically unlikely to ever discharge it to prevent a crime.