And yet they’re still absolute strangers, can still kill you, and you still trust them every time you take the crosswalk.
And let’s face it, driver standards in the US are laughable. The equivalent for guns would be a test that said “Where’s the trigger? Where’s does the bullet come out? Can you recognize a “gun free zone” sign?” and a test where you shot a gun and if you pointed it vaguely downrange, you pass.
I’m an advocate for gun safety. So is every gun rights supporter I know.
That isn’t somewhere I’d be to begin with. But suppose you said a bar. If things seemed calm and the firearms stayed safely in holsters I would be ok with it. But I know guns and don’t want to be around a bunch of careless people handling them.
This is really silly. Ask yourself why police, secret service and other security personnel carry guns.
If you were in fear for your life, and you hired a security detail, and they showed up with nothing but leather jackets and heavy boots, would you feel safe? If the cops came to protect you from an ex who made threats on your life, would you be happy if they showed up with radios and handcuffs only?
Yes, we should all strive to turn every piece of America into the hood. The soft suburbanites and their insulated, blasé attitude towards armed shopkeepers is making this country soft, weak, and pathetic. Why shop at your gunless, neighborhood Costco when you can shop at a bodega, slipping cash to a guy who’s got one hand on a shotgun, eyeing the shifty teenagers by the funions, making sure they aren’t shoplifting?
I would absolutely bat an eye if everyone at the Best Buy had a fire extinguisher on their belt loop. Or a first aid kit. Or bear mace. Or rattlesnake anti-venom. I certainly would not feel safer.
Or grenades? Or a chainsaw? Or the cow-gun from No Country for Old Men?
It’s COMPANY POLICY to have their workers armed and dangerous. The risk of being robbed at gunpoint has outweighed the risk of arming their employees. That is crossing the tipping point. That means the availability of guns and the brazeness of criminals has shifted from it being improbable to probable. That is a terrifying hypothetical and I cannot for the life of me see how people are understating the seriousness and even embracing this scenario.
The fact of the matter is that guns make it so much easier to kill people than just about any other method. It is foolish to go about our lives pretending otherwise. You can trust that law abiding gun-toting citizens will do their best to prevent death and destruction, but really the best way to prevent an encounter with guns is to get rid of them wholesale for everybody.
Oh, iiandyiiii, you must have a lot of safer drivers in VA than we do in any of the many other places I have lived.
Look at it this way, folks, if all these people who are going to leave and never come back really do so, the rest of us are gonna get waited on a lot sooner.
So if they kept the guns in glass (or let’s be realistic, drawers or cabinets) in various places all over the store in case of emergency, that’d be okay? Seriously, you have a problem with first aid kits??
Suppose I did say a bar. And suppose in this calm and otherwise relaxed bar one drunken idiot makes a pass at the girlfriend of another drunken idiot. And suppose that instead of settling it like men by beating the hell out of one another, they decide to settle it like cowboys and draw their guns to see if either can shoot the other dead. Suppose you’re in the bar and know nothing about what’s about to happen because you had to go to the can to take a piss and are just coming out in time to catch the stray bullet. All while your gun is safely in its holster because you’re one of the responsible gun owners. Not one of those other idiots.
Absolutely. Got a time machine, or magic wand? Otherwise, we have to deal with the reality we live in (which includes guns) rather than the imaginary gun free utopia we’d prefer.
I’d walk in, scream “he’s got a gun” and throw myself on the floor. Just to see what happened
If it was, for instance, a print shop with just a few employees and they were friendly, I wouldn’t really care. If it was a big place with a big staff it would be unsettling. Like they were all in a cult.
If I worked in a liquor store or a convienence store, I’d want to be tricked out like Neo going in to the federal building. Some places are popular targets for armed robbers. But going into a non-cash business like a real estate office and seeing everyone carrying a gun, I’d assume they were militia-type fruitcakes and therefore unstable.
Keeping the gun behind glass would be much preferred to keeping it on their persons. I don’t have a problem with first aid kits necessarily but I would be asking what the impetus was for Corporate to mandate all of the employees be carrying it.
In this case, it’s not the kits themselves I have a problem but the potential danger that warranted the response. Handguns on the other hand speaks for itself. As I (and others) have said, the only reason you carry a gun is so you can injure/kill someone.
Assuming I wasn’t just passing through, I’d more than likely live in the community and be armed myself, if things had come to that pass.
I think it’s far more likely that some crackpot right-wing owner would do just what the OP suggests and incentivize the open carry of guns in his business. In all likelihood, it would be somewhere relatively crime free like a small town, or a wealthy suburb.
You said it, but it’s not true. I have never carried a gun in order to injure or kill someone. I carry a gun to discourage others from injuring or killing me.
This is the disconnect. Preparing for even rare events does not make one paranoid, and does not imply a lack of safety. In fact, it implies the opposite. Preparation is key to preventing and mitigating disasters, no matter how rare.
Couldn’t agree with you more. My personal best to prevent death and destruction, and to prepare for eventual etc. is to not hang out where people are armed.
YMMV.
Gas mask on tight? Plastic gloves got your hands sealed o.k.?
For all those using “public roads and spaces” as a credible risk to life and limb of every day life… fine, we all accept that risk. We are all aware that fires break out and bad drivers on cell phones kill pedestrians at cross walks, etc.
It’s really quite silly to point to every day risks we all assume by simply living life in the world we all inhabit. What with cars and planes and falling pianos looking to kill you at every turn. How does it follow, that increasing the presence of guns in this mix makes for a more safe environment in which to live? It doesn’t. It just doesn’t.
Well, statistics seem to show that passing laws to limit the number of guns does not make the environment more safe either. Thus, apparently, having fewer guns does not make you safer. So maybe it’s not so silly to suggest that life is a fairly risky proposition.
That’s a personal choice I choose not to make. However, I wouldn’t be afraid of someone carrying a gas mask. If I saw someone wearing one I would be afraid, for the same reason I would be scared of someone firing a gun in my vicinity. That means there is an attack in progress. Simply carrying a firearm or protective mask means no such thing.
You really don’t get it. See, if you have a gun, you kill the bastards BEFORE they release the deadly gas attack.