Right. But in 2010, you opposed changing the law that would permit concealed carry permit holders from carrying concealed while in a bar.
In support of that policy preference, you offered a specific prediction – at least by implication – about what would happen if the law were passed.
Now, of course there have been shootings in and around bars. But have there been any shootings that happened because the shooter was wearing his legally concealed weapon in a bar pursuant to the new law? Did the reasons you gave for opposing the law actually happen?
I can’t find a single instance, post-passage. Not one.
My opposition to the law wasn’t based on empirical evidence, but logic. If it hasn’t led to any more bar shootings, that’s good, but irrelevant to my contention that it makes the situation more dangerous.
Except that the lack of any incidents to support your theory ought to – at some point – make you wonder if you weighed the dangers correctly.
Put another way, if I had said to you in 2010, “We should pass this law, because in its first five years of existence not one concealed carry permit holder will ‘shoot up a bar,’ as per your worry.”
Would you have acknowledged this?
What evidence would be enough to suggest to you that your worries were overstated?
So, given that no evidence would convince you, would it be fair to say that your worries with respect to the dangers of legalizing concealed carry in bars in Virginia were and are unfalsifiable?
Apparently the law allowed business owners to prohibit firearms on their premises. I’m curious about how many did so (and not being a Virginian I have no idea.)
I don’t know how that might be researched; there’s no central repository. All a business has to do is prominently display their refusal to allow firearms.
I’ve seen a couple of signs like that in the Northern Virginia area, but vanishingly few.
Between 2006 and today, I’ve seen one in a bank in Falls Church, one at a restaurant in Woodbridge, and one at a buffalo-wings themed sports bar in Arlington. I watch for them, and often carry a little card that says, “My family will be dining elsewhere because of your policy,” which I give to the manager on duty.
No evidence at all? Really? Would you accept that as a valid argument from someone who claimed SSM would lead to a breakdown of the family structure in the US and therefore should not be made legal?
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t think that’s a valid comparison. “Allowing guns in bars will lead to more gun violence in bars” is a reasonable logical step, even if it’s one that may have been rebutted by empirical evidence. There’s no plausible mechanism by which SSM can lead to a breakdown of family structure, though.
Once homosexuality is accepted as normal, they will recruit younger people and propagate that deviant lifestyle until it ruins most American families. There is no evidence you can show me that will convince me I am wrong about that.
Guns were already allowed in bars; the only difference the new law added to the mix is that people have been allowed to concealed-carry in bars, so your comparison should be “People who concealed carry in bars are more prone to gun violence than people who open carry in bars,” and that’s just not the case.
In an effort to be responsive to your inquiry, here is a site that documents user experience at various locations. You can search by geographic region:
If that’s what you want to hear, then sure. This is a five year old thread, and I don’t know what’s going to be said in it that wasn’t said five years ago. A person with a gun is still more dangerous than a person without a gun. Is this even debatable? If you wanted to kill me, couldn’t you do it more easily armed than unarmed? Isn’t that the reason people invented weapons in the first place, to multiply their force? So, if that’s the case, then how does having more people armed not increase the overall danger?
You don’t know if it does or not because you are only considering the potential negative outcomes and not the potential positive outcomes. The equivocation between the two is misleading, and not informative. It does allow you to proclaim some kind of truism, that a person with a gun is more dangerous than one without, which ironically is not necessarily true.
Your prediction from the past has been shown to be inaccurate. That’s what is going to be said now that wasn’t said five years ago. Well, it was said, just not by you.
Fine. “My prediction from the past has been shown to be inaccurate.” Now I’ve said it. So are we going to bump this thread a year from now, or two years from now, or five years from now to again say my prediction is inaccurate? I could probably ask the mods to sticky it if that would be more convenient.