Candle light vigil for....nope, sorry, thanks for playing.

My goons.

Where are these goons you speak of? Did Rick ever advocate the use of goons?
Regardless, I'm more of an "evil henchmen" type myself, preferably more dim-witted than myself - and that's no easy task!

Is goon slang for something sexual on the other side of the pond? Or is it some type of food?

It's a reference to Rick sending some thugs to do what he wasn't willing to do himself. I'd say he's our most violent member, but he's really more of a manipulative sociopath.

You forgot "After beating up the old man and trying to rob him."

Mind you I agree it was a bad shoot. But let's not leave out important info.

I heard this morning she wasn't pregnant.

No it imprints a mindset of helplessness and dependency on the government. It raises a society of pussies who are incapable of personal responsibility and always looking to blame someone else for their lot in life.

I'm so glad we're able to discuss middle ground here at Wordforge.

Says the guy that keeps leaving out the part where this all happened after she took part in beating the shit out of the old man.

Why do you hate pussies? (I apologize if you're genuinely gay. Nothing wrong with that.)
Laws, police and judicial system exist to make sure that our societies aren't ruled by wanton violence and vigilante justice. You can ignore hundreds of years of civilization. I'm not going to.

You know why we decided to create governments, social contracts, organized societies? Because anarchy doesn't work. And leaving "justice" in each individual's hands is a fucking terrible idea.

Anyone who thinks leaving people to mete out their own brand of justice is a good idea should perhaps refer to Albania's ongoing issues with honor codes.

It turns out if you let people make their own laws and their own justice, they won't behave very justly. Imagine that.

YES! Now I remember - some kind of protest or march or something that got violent.

Thank you! It puts out a message that you (the individual) don't have the authority to defend yourself on even the most basic non-lethal level, that being young children being bullied.
You must leave that to the professionals!

Thank you for the Government 101 class seeing as I might have missed that during my years in high school and college.

No one here is advocating anarchy. They are advocating the right not be attacked and terrorized in their own home. You're all for letting the police handle things. You have faith that the government will always be there to protect you and administer justice.I don't have that faith. Experience tells me that there will never be enough money in the budget to have enough police to save people from attacks in their own home. All you have to do is pick up a newspaper or watch your local news to understand that. People have every right to protect themselves in their own home just as they have every right to retaliate from assault in their own home.

You are correct, that's why anarchy doesn't work. Thus the 80 year old will be tried by a jury of his peers - it the DA even pursues it. We have a justice system (I call it the Justice Circus) but love it or hate it, that's what we have.
It's a crap shoot and you win some and you lose some. So if it was "wrong" to shoot the robber (front, back, who cares, dead is dead) that's for the court to decide. So who again is advocating anarchy?

True dat! When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. They just can't be everywhere at once.
How could they be hiding in ambush every other block just to give me a ticket and chase robbers too?

You weren't advocating anything. You were calling people who don't think they need a gun to feel safe "pussies".
I feel less safe the more people own guns. Not because I'm a coward but because I don't trust everybody to make rational choices at all times.

And wasn't this thread about a guy shooting somebody in the back? Who's the coward here? I can't believe some people are still calling this "self-defense". The dangerous situation was over.

Could they have come back with backup? Sure, who knows. But you don't get to shoot people in a non-dangerous situation as some sort of pre-emptive strike.

Calm down, maybe you'll be called to offer your expert testimony during the trial. I'm sure it will be the turning point that does him in.

Safety is a far more complex issue than whether or not one owns a gun. It's irritating to see it boiled down in such a stupidly reductionist manner. The fact is that having a gun in your home is, itself, a hazard. Those hazards can be mitigated somewhat through various safety measures, but those measures also reduce the efficacy of a gun in the sorts of situations where you'd need one. For instance, if you have a gun in your closet in a locked box on a shelf, it's going to take you a minute to get to it if you hear a burglar in the house. On the other hand, not keeping it locked up in a high place means one of your kids (or a friend of your kids) might find it and have a tragic accident. Or maybe you're a deep sleeper and the burglar sees the gun sitting right on your nightstand and just takes it. There are a lot of tradeoffs involved and anyone who thinks "I just need a gun to feel safe" hasn't thought very hard about the issues involved.

We are all discussing on the basis of media reports. "You don't know the full story" is hardly a smart point to make.

B-but they need guns to feel safe! Those of us who don't own guns are actually "weaker" because we can live without them. To my knowledge it's the only instance where dependence is seen as a strength.

Your kids can find the liquid draino and decide to drink it. They could go through the drawers, find the matches or lighter and burn the house down. They could even choke to death on spare change.

Of course there's risks involved. Most gun owners are responsible,well trained and teach their kids that guns are weapons that kill people. They're also smart enough to keep their bedrooms locked and their kids left with an understanding that severe punishment will come trying to enter that room. They're not all a bunch of clueless people who woke up one day and decided to own a gun with no idea of the risks involved.

You keep your bedroom locked? How're you going to get to your guns in time when the black helicopters arrive?

You do realize any parents worth a damn actually keep those things you mentioned locked up, right? At least until the kids are old enough to understand "these things will kill you."

Guns, of course, have a unique appeal, due to their ubiquity in popular culture. Kids think guns are cool--that's the message. I'm not aware of any TV shows that say drinking Dran-O is cool. If kids find a gun, they're likely to play with it, even if they've been cautioned repeatedly and taught to respect firearms. I can say this with confidence because of all the stories where people have guns in the house and a kid ends up dead even though the kids were "raised right." Fun fact: kids don't always do as they're told.

Yeah I don't where that anarchy bullshit came from. Talk about a strawman.

Here's a fun fact: Its impossible to prevent every tragedy. So we are right back to who do you trust more to keep you safe? Government or the people.

Another fun fact: Not all cops are good guys.

Yes, sadly police can't prevent every tragedy. You're right.
We acknowledge that and accept that it's a less-than-perfect system that is still better than the alternative (an armed vigilante society).

Don't be so scared.

Not all gun-loving wannabe-Batmans are "good guys" either. I'll go with the trained professionals who aren't nearly as bad as you're trying to paint them. And if there are some corrupt police departments... work on reforming them. Create a better system. Don't just let people exercise self-justice.

I don't have kids.
Nobody leaves their gun sitting right on their nightstand.

How do you get the authorities to handle someone beating you up in your own home at 3AM? Excuse yourself from the fight, dial 911 while the robbers wait patiently, then go back to the beating and wait for the cops?