“I’m a gun owner; Tim Walz is a gun owner,” Harris said.
“I did not know that,” Winfrey replied.
“If somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot,” Harris added. “Probably should not have said that. But my staff will deal with that later.”
The article has a video clip. I love the bullshit “probably…” It’s a 100% certainty she spoke with her staff and workshopped the phrasing and presentation of gun stuff. Plus I bet she practiced her lines. No American politician is going to wing it when talking about guns.
You’re scolding me over a complete distortion of the facts. The vast, vast majority of home invasions are intended to be while no one is home, so you will have no cause to shoot someone because either you aren’t there (this is most likely) or you are there and you will scare them off with a threat (if not your mere presence). Cheshire Home Invasion situations are so rare that there’s a reason many people outside of Connecticut know its name, because this scenario of sub-human sickos aiming to break in while your family is home and murder you happens less often than people getting struck by lightning.
Fantasizing about shooting people is pathological. Do better.
DOJ reports 1 in 3 home invasions involves violent victimization, which makes it just as common as the house fires that any prudent person considers and prepares against.
While the actual rate of violent victimization during home invasion is a few orders of magnitude more prevalent than you acknowledge, your lightning analogy actually serves to demonstrate my point: As a society, we have deemed it prudent to establish extensive plans specifically to avoid getting struck by lightning. We cancel or delay sporting events, from youth soccer to major league baseball. We are taught to seek shelter indoors. If stuck outdoors, avoid tall structures. Don’t stand under loan trees, or near flagpoles. If stuck in a field, lay down on the ground. We take all sorts of measures to avoid this extraordinarily rare event.
Prudent people plan for the eventualities you argue are too rare for rational people to even contemplate. Preparation for equally serious and much more prevalent emergencies is perfectly reasonable and rational.
It’s common courtesy when you make a citation on a forum like this, that you actually link to it. I must assume this is the report you mean, which, if so, you misread or misrepresented, because what it actually says is 7% of home invasions involve violent victimization (in most cases just assault). Anyway, it’s my fault for inviting us to get too stuck in the weeds.
I’m never said people shouldn’t take measures against burglary, and on the contrary have nothing against having locks, deadbolts, cameras, security systems, and signage for the latter two. Probably the main thing that I have against keeping guns is that you’re more likely to hurt yourself or a family member or someone than a Home Invader, which I’m sure you’d agree is only prudent.
But even that’s sort of a distraction because my main gripe wasn’t with people keeping guns but with them focusing on this specific circumstance of killing a home invader as an automatic response. As another poster said, it is both more humane and more sensible to hypothetically use the gun mainly as a means to threaten the hypothetical Invader. They aren’t going to be interested in attacking someone with a gun, it makes things easier if you’re being a moron (as many people apparently are) and just mistaking some innocent person for a threat, and it’s also not just treating the Home Invader’s life like it’s de facto fit to be ended by summary execution. But no, Americans would rather play King of the Castle and hype themselves up to murder the Unworthy, indeed getting so excited that they are, again, more likely to shoot their own family member or some random drunk guy who thought he was at his own house or something.