Americans: so, you walk into a store and spot that everyone is armed

[Loach]

@Accidental_Martyr

More guns equals more chance of someone being injured or killed. I would rather that not be me.

Best user/post combo I’ve seen in a while.

If the situation happened in this state I would be extremely worried. It takes an act of god to get a carry permit here.

If it was an open carry state I wouldn’t care a bit about it.

[DrDeth]

@Der_Trihs

And in the real world, that’s when you die. This isn’t a Wild West movie, real world people can’t draw a gun faster than someone with a gun pointed at them can pull a trigger.

However, it’s still very risky for a robber, esp if there are a number of armed employees. At one Gun Store I know, they always had at least 3 armed employees around, plus maybe 1-2 in back. If you wanted to rob that place, you better come well planned, well armed and with several partners.

Many robbers just grab a cheap gun and demand the cash, with no plan, no partner.

[Si_Amigo]

@GusNSpot

Your second statement indicates you don’t live in the USA? That is about your first sentence in the second paragraph.

The rest of the paragraph does not have anything to do with what I asked unless you live in a really strange place in the USA, IMO

Feel free to correct me as I can’t get a grasp of where this would be that only cops & mob guys conceal carry in restaurants. And the cops need calling??? Hummmm

Yeah, guns shows are cool.

You called them out as two well dressed guys with guns. Brings to mind TV detectives and Pulp Fiction type criminals. It’s a joke.

[YogSothoth]

@DrDeth

So, the fact that you have been in many such stores but just didn’t know they were carrying is OK, and not scary?

@QuickSilver

No. If I swam in shark infested waters but didn’t know it and wasn’t attacked, would I be more or less foolish to return after having learned it’s a dangerous spot for swimming?

What he said.

I could easily say to you, DrDeth, that you’ve probably been in many stores where nobody was armed and came out fine. By your logic, that proves you’re equally safe in places where no one was armed

[DrDeth]

@YogSosoth

What he said.

I could easily say to you, DrDeth, that you’ve probably been in many stores where nobody was armed and came out fine. By your logic, that proves you’re equally safe in places where no one was armed

True. But neither one was scary.

I gave a talk one day to like 1000 armed plainclothes policemen, and didn’t feel in the least scared. In fact I felt rather safe.

[RickJay]

There are really only two possibilities:

1. The store is so incredibly prone to outbreaks of gunplay from its customers that arming all the staff is necessary. In that case, I’d be rather foolish to go somewhere gun battles are that common. I should shop somewhere with fewer gunfights.

2. The store is in fact NOT prone to frequent gun battles, in which case the manager of the store is a lunatic, and I’d be foolish to go there.

[YogSothoth]

@DrDeth

True. But neither one was scary.

I gave a talk one day to like 1000 armed plainclothes policemen, and didn’t feel in the least scared. In fact I felt rather safe.

I’m fine if the police are armed. Not non-LEOs

[Aspenglow]

@jsgoddess

Open carry sends a message. The message it sends me is not one that I welcome, so I would tend to avoid a place where open carry was prevalent.

Spot on.

I live in an open carry state, but I almost never see it in practice. Guys carrying their guns into the gun store, that’s about it.

The only time I recall when I saw open carry in an establishment was at a little remote whistle-stop diner near where I live. The cook had a big ol’ .45 strapped to his hip, and he cooked in clear view of everyone in the restaurant. The gun didn’t make me nervous, but the message he was sending did. Didn’t go back until ownership had changed. I think my reaction would be the same to any establishment where the employees engaged in this practice.

As far as CCW here goes, they’re easy to get if you have enough box tops. I figure at least 30% of people I see out and about in my area are carrying concealed. It doesn’t bother me much, because there is less overt “confrontation” with concealed carry. That said, some are nutters for sure, and that’s unsettling to consider.

[Quartz]

@pancakes3

As I (and others) have said, the only reason you carry a gun is so you can injure/kill someone.

So everyone carrying a gun is out to kill someone? I’ve often heard the reverse of your statement: you carry a gun so that you won’t be a victim.

[Der_Trihs]

@DrDeth

And in the real world, that’s when you die. This isn’t a Wild West movie, real world people can’t draw a gun faster than someone with a gun pointed at them can pull a trigger.

However, it’s still very risky for a robber, esp if there are a number of armed employees. At one Gun Store I know, they always had at least 3 armed employees around, plus maybe 1-2 in back. If you wanted to rob that place, you better come well planned, well armed and with several partners.

Many robbers just grab a cheap gun and demand the cash, with no plan, no partner.

In the real world those armed people are mostly likely going to run or hide, shoot each other, or be shot by the crook first. And not many people are going to rob a gun store when they can just pick up guns in people’s houses instead.

And what good does it do for you anyway if the guy gets shot after you are dead?

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

One dispute, & things can go very wrong.
Leave.
i can buy elsewhere.

[Gray_Ghost]

Schools Seeking to Arm Employees Hit Hurdle on Insurance (Published 2013)

@Joey_P

Do you have a cite for that? I’ve never heard of an insurance carrier saying that their clients can’t carry guns.

I’ve never seen anything about it in my business policy. Granted, I’ve never looked for it, but I’ve gone through it pretty thoroughly while looking for other things.

The link above your quote is to a NYT article about the issues schools seeking to allow CHL holders to carry on campus. Short version: their carriers are giving them a very hard time. But mostly, I was guessing, based on the antipathy in every employee handbook I’ve seen in Texas, that liability insurance was driving the animus towards employees carrying.

[Antinor01]

@The_Hamster_King

If the staff is justified in walking around armed then the store must be a very dangerous place. Perhaps it gets robbed all the time. So I would leave for my own safety.

If the staff is just doing to prove some political point then they’re nutters. I prefer not to do business with nutters. So I would leave and find someplace saner to shop.

Either way, I’m out of there and I would tell all my friends to avoid the place.

Agreed. I wouldn’t be there long enough to have asked the question mentioned in the OP.

[Chronos]

Quoth Joey P:

To answer your first question, the point at which you pull out your gun is when the crook points a gun at you. In all likelihood he ‘doesn’t want any trouble’. He just wants to rob you and has no intention of shooting. Pulling out your gun and shooting him will put an end to that. Also, in the eyes of the law it ensures that you were acting in self defense.

OK, so, you can draw your gun, aim it, and fire it in less time than the crook can fire his gun which he has already drawn and aimed? What do you do for self-defense if you’re not superhuman, and are only about as quick as the crook? And even if you do, how does pulling out your gun and shooting him “put an end to that”? What’s to stop him from immediately responding by shooting you, leaving you both dying of blood loss over the next couple of minutes?

To reply to your second question, sure, no guns would be great, but how do you propose we get there? How are you going to get the bad guys to promise to start robbing stores without them? One of my far right wing friends posted some picture on facebook the other day that I felt dirty for agreeing with (in my head), mostly just because it made sense. Something along the lines of ‘taking guns away from good guys won’t stop the bad guys from from shooting us’.

That’s what I don’t get. Sure, all the ‘good guys’ are all to happy to say ‘let’s all give up our guns’, but A)how many of them have guns to give up and B)why do they think all the bad guys are going to give up theirs?

“Taking guns away from good guys” is of course ludicrous, if for no other reason than that you don’t know who the good guys are. So you take them away from everyone, good and bad alike. This is not expected to make the criminal say “Darn, I guess I won’t bother trying to shoot anyone any more”; it’s expected to make the criminal say “Darn, I wanted to shoot someone, but I have no way to get a gun”. It’s easy for criminals to get guns, because it’s easy for everyone to get guns. The criminal can just walk right up and buy one, without even needing to pass a background check. Or if he doesn’t want to even do that, he can steal one from a law-abiding citizen. Take the guns away from the dealers and the law-abiding citizens, and now he can’t do either of those.

No, the results would not be instantaneous from this. But guns don’t last forever. They wear out, or get confiscated, or get lost, or get ditched by people not wanting to get caught with them, or get turned in at no-questions-asked amnesties. Within a decade, we’d reach a new equilibrium level where the amount of guns taken out of circulation again equals the amount put in, and that equilibrium level would have far fewer guns in the hands of criminals.

Is this possible? Not right now, because we’ve got an amendment that prevents us from doing what would need to be done, and there’s nowhere remotely near enough public sentiment to be able to repeal it. But that doesn’t mean we do nothing. That means we educate people.

[elfkin477]

It would make me very, very nervous. Why are they armed? The news said that those two people had ebola, were the media outlets lying? Have they in fact brought the T-virus onto American soil? How many zombies are there? Are they here, right in the town I’ve decided to go shopping in? Should I be armed too? I don’t have a gun, will the zombies go after me first?!?

[kayT]

It seems to me that paranoia is not the exclusive property of gun owners.

[pancakes3]

@Quartz

So everyone carrying a gun is out to kill someone? I’ve often heard the reverse of your statement: you carry a gun so that you won’t be a victim.

Don’t twist up “can” with “must”. The reason people carry guns is so they CAN kill someone. Sometimes the threat alone is enough to deter but you shouldn’t try to downplay the fact that the only value that gun holds is its ability to kill.

“You carry a gun so you won’t be a victim” is euphemizing the statement. It really reads like “You carry a gun so you can kill someone before they get the chance to victimize you”.

[Inna_Minnit]

@pancakes3

I think it’s a bit ridiculous to pretend that there are other justifications for the existence of guns. Even if you want to stretch the ancillary utility of the THREAT of injury or death, the crux of the utility hinges directly on its ability to easily and effectively injure/kill somebody.

It’s as if you’re asking for a cite that food exists solely to provide nourishment when in fact many people use food as an aphrodisiac, coping mechanism, et. al.

I guess the easiest cite would be definitively:

Gun, as defined by the OED: a. A weapon consisting essentially of a metal tube (massive enough to require to be mounted on a carriage or a fixed substructure) from which heavy missiles are thrown by the force of gunpowder, or (in later use) by explosive force of any kind;

Weapon, as defined by the OED: a. An instrument of any kind used in warfare or in combat to attack and overcome an enemy

Note, the definition doesn’t include its aesthetics, historical value, sentimental value, or use as an aide to hone hand-eye coordination. Guns shoot projectiles at things at a high speed because projectiles being shot at high speeds hurt people. When those projectiles hit a body part fast enough, it kills that person. What else is there to discuss?

I asked for a cite. Not a diatribe. Here are some statistics for you. According to the FBI in 2011 there were 8,583 firearms related homicides. As I showed above in the same year there were 10.8 million NEW firearm purchases. This is not counting all the existing weapons. That means .00079 percent of the new guns purchased that year, assuming them to be the only guns in existence, were involved in a homicide. How the hell can you with a straight face say that the only purpose of a gun is to maim destroy and kill?

Cite, dammit.

[sinjin]

@Chronos

Either they anticipate needing to use those guns, or they don’t. If they don’t anticipate using the guns, but got them anyway, then they’re irrational. If they do anticipate using them, then I don’t want to be there, because being in places where guns are used is dangerous. Either way, I leave.

This. Vote Chronos because I can.

[Eva_Luna]

@pancakes3

Because hopefully there are stores that would provide the exact same services except for the fact that everyone in it is carrying a device which its sole purpose is to injure/maim/kill.

It’s pretty much the same reason that I won’t frequent a store where everyone in it has a leashed attack dog, or a live grenade, or a vial of anthrax.

Likewise. I just don’t want to be around guns, period.