Also, Missouri has a ridiculous law now that literally anyone can conceal carry....without a permit. You can't be a felon and have to be over 21. I still maintain my permit status for the reciprocity advantages it brings with other states who recognize Missouri's conceal carry permit....but yeah, there's no telling how many people are carrying in Missouri. Unless they're one of the douche bag open carry people who like to show off.
Yikes, that's like the wild west 
I know in Georgia where my son lives you can open carry if you have a permit for the gun, no special permit required to open carry and believe me when I tell you, the natives of the area take full advantage of that law. We went to eat at Texas Roadhouse and I swear just about every dude in that joint was packing heat.
I bought a pellet rifle recently because it looks a lot like a real .22 - it doesn't have the bright orange plastic piece on the muzzle like a lot of pellet and bb guns. It's CO2 powered I forget the size the pellets I'm using but they get buried pretty deep in the maple tree I've been shooting at in my yard, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't feel very good getting hit my a couple of these pellets especially on exposed skin, but I didn't get it to shoot anybody, I got it because it was a cheap, practically non-lethal and perfectly legal thing for me to have that I could conceivably defend my mother and wife with if we ever had intruders. I live in a nice, middle class neighborhood in a good part of town, but just a couple of miles from here there have been some home invasions over the last few years. So I wanted something that looks like an actual rifle that fires real .22-caliber bullets and the sales guy from the web site gave me 3 options, two pump-style rifles that are single shot or this semi-automatic CO2 model that can old about 15 to 18 pellets at a time and you can empty it as fast as you can pull the trigger. That was the option for me 
I hope it will never come to that, but you never know. I have a machete and a taser too. But the taser is really only good for someone who is within 10 or 15 feet at the most. Kind of an "if all else fails" kind of option.
Every two or three years I break out the Sean Taylor story, and it seems that it's that time again. Taylor was a safety for the Redskins. When the Skins were playing an away game some knucklehead kids decided it'd be a great time to burglarize his home since he's obviously out of town. Turns out he was injured, so he stayed home shacked up with his baby-mama. He hears the ruckus and runs out to confront them with a machete, at which point one of the kids panics and shoots him in the leg. He died the next morning from massive blood loss. The thing is, none of these idiots every had any intention of shooting anybody. If he'd just yelled GTFO they probably would have run off screaming. They were caught completely by surprise by a ginormous black guy running at them with a machete. Three ran and one started shooting wildly.
I bust out this story to point out to people that unless you have the means of ending a gunfight, you shouldn't attend one. Often times people escalate the situation well beyond their ability to prevail. Sean Taylor took a knife to a gunfight that he unwittingly instigated. If you point that pellet rifle at somebody, you will start a gunfight, and you won't win it.
My question is, why don't you just buy a shotgun? Shotguns are generally not covered by other statutes regarding gun ownership. Even teenagers can buy them. They're affordable, highly effective, and something damn near anybody can own and shoot.
Also, as much for curiosity as anything else, try putting a T-shirt in front of an old piece of leather furniture, or a jacket or something, and shooting that. You might very well find that the pellet doesn't penetrate the leather, which is somewhat analogous to human skin. Trees are hard and don't dissipate energy. Fabric and leather absorb quite a bit of energy.
Topic: Guns: Yay or nay? (Read 38695 times)
