I carry a knife in my pocket almost everywhere I go. I’ve never used it as a weapon, but have used it thousands of times for other purposes. So I carry it because I find it useful, and in the unlikely chance that I’ll need it for self defense or defense of others, it will be available. I don’t remove it from my pocket when I can’t imagine a scenario that would be improved by my having it.
The people who could carry legally under this proposed law probably wouldn’t carry because they felt a particular need to carry at the stadium specifically, but because they carry throughout the day, before and after the four hours they may spend at the stadium. As I’ve tried to point out earlier, there’s a non-zero risk in not carrying game day or leaving your gun in the car while you’re at the game.
I, too, carry a knife almost everywhere, because I can think of a lot of situations where having it would be a good thing. I don’t carry a gun, because I can’t think of situations where having it would be a good thing.
That is all cops & military, where are the ones done by civilian CCW weapons carriers?
Now just who is it that needs more training?
All of these cites are about people who are supposed to be trained in this type of thing. They go to the danger…
CCW holders are not LEO’s or Firemen that are paid to go towards trouble.
Where are the reports of CCW weapon people going towards a mass shooting event to play gunfighter?
A lot of ‘they will go crazy and all be shooting at anything that moves’ are being said with no proof from even the Onion.
Want to die in a crowd? Go to England where there are no guns and cheer a feetsball team from the wrong side of the pitch. Bawahahahha
Hummmm. let’s keep maybe a 1000 people with firearms from a stadium so that you will not be afraid. Better Idea, the 100 that are that afraid should just stay home.
It seems the largest number of unarmed civilians shot by others who are not themselves criminals ( at least they should not be ) are shot by the police. Why don’t you fear them as they are all over the stadiums during games? Look at those cites, so why are you not afraid of them?
You need to fear people, not knives or guns or ball bats.
Or, if you are terrified of leaving your house without your gun, maybe it is you that should stay home.
You know, there are dangers out there that even your gun can’t protect you from. Most of them far more likely to kill you.
If I felt that leaving my home without my gun would leave me in danger, I also wouldn’t leave my home without a full set of body armor, a life preserver, a first aid kit, and a snorkel. Do you carry all of these life saving pieces of gear with you?
Do you even carry even the most rudimentary first aid kit with you? I bet you would save a dozen lives with that before you saved a single life with your gun, probably even your own.
So, not arguing that carrying your gun into a crowded stadium makes you safer, that is a much more rational perspective to take.
You are arguing that your convenience should take precedence.
So, I’ve asked those who do not feel safe without their gun what price they are willing to subject the public safety to in order to quell their fears, and got crickets on that.
As yours is a more rational reason, I ask you, what price you are willing to impose upon public safety for your convenience?
Even if someone were going to draw and fire their gun in self-defense in a stadium, (which is what this is for) how the hell do they ensure they don’t hit someone else?
This isn’t a dark lonely alleyway, this is a packed stadium with tens of thousands of people.
In general, how frequently do incidents serious enough to require stadium security to intervene happen? Considering that out of 50,000 people quite a few would fit under the bottom 1% of the bell curve, stadium crowds seem to be individually well-behaved. (All bets are off when it comes to crowd behavior.)
Very little. If it were legal for me to carry to an event at a stadium and I chose to carry, the risk to the public would be far less than the risk to the public of me driving there (and in many decades of driving I’ve never been in an injury accident). If I were armed it actually make it less likely that I would be involved in altercations since I wouldn’t be drinking and would be more consciously avoiding them.
I don’t feel compelled to actually carry very often, BUT one of the few times I really wish I could is when going to sporting events at our local arena.
To explain, parking is in short supply for large events, and I generally have to park blocks away, often in an alley. Sometimes I can get a garage spot, which are generally dimly lit, but there is still a long walk through our downtown area. Most of these events are happening after sunset, and usually prompt people to carry cash.
Anyway, for whatever its worth, I don’t really want to carry while I’m in the arena…Its the traveling to and from the arena that worries me. I’ve made the trip a lot, unarmed, with not problems, but I still worry.
I am certain a lot of you will tell me that if I’m that worried, I should just stay home. Fine, whatever, that’s like your opinion, man… I just wanted to express that carrying in an arena/stadium does not automatically equate to expecting the threat to actually arise inside the venue.
Best argument anyone on the pro-gun side has made. Definitely worth thinking about.
(Doesn’t apply in some cities, where the stadiums are either in nicer sections of town, or have their own parking lots with additional fast mass transit access, etc. Not all places make you walk through seedy areas. But, yeah, some do.)
My main response was to your use of overall statistics of gun accidents in response to being asked if a slight modification of carry laws would make a significant difference. It’s obvious if there are guns in 55 million households (a quoted number, there’s no certain number but it’s a lot) there will be a fairly large absolute number of gun accidents. It’s not obvious a slight change to where you can take them would make a noticeable difference, and ‘if it could save one life’ is a basically logically flawed argument in a 300 million person country, for anything.
It’s not obvious there will be any significant addition to gun accidents from people carrying guns to one more place. IOW my hypothesis is that neither you nor pkbites could provide statistics proving or even general indicating that either way, which is again IME almost always the case with statistics and guns for measures actually debated. If guns magically disappeared there wouldn’t be lots of gun accidents, or lots of people deterring violence against themselves as also surely happens a lot. But they aren’t going to, and it doesn’t follow directly that there will be lots more accidents at the margin relative to ‘good cases’ if you let the 10’s of millions of guns into a few more places.
And, though it’s not the general style for gun debates, no I don’t have to completely disagree with you to comment. I don’t have a big problem excluding guns from stadiums. But I wouldn’t have a really big problem with not excluding them, definitely not a big problem from afar if they did it in states where lots of people carry guns. Again where I live basically nobody can carry a gun anywhere. Which believe it or not is not the hugest issue for me either way. If I forced to give an opinion I’d say my state’s gun laws are over the top, and some of them are definitely idiotic (eg. how you can remove a bayonet lug from the AR-15 and legally sell it in NJ, but the whole family of the M1 carbine, the peashooter M1 carbine for Chrissake, is an ‘assault rifle’: that’s something written by people who know nothing about the topic they are making policy on, which they criticize when done by the other party, hypocritically though not necessarily incorrectly ). But not a big factor in my life, and there just isn’t strong statistical evidence that gun laws within the realm of possibility make much difference.
I don’t have a big problem excluding guns from stadiums. But I wouldn’t have a really big problem with not excluding them, definitely not a big problem from afar if they did it in states where lots of people carry guns. Again where I live basically nobody can carry a gun anywhere. Which believe it or not is not the hugest issue for me either way. If I forced to give an opinion I’d say my state’s gun laws are over the top, and some of them are definitely idiotic (eg. how you can remove a bayonet lug from the AR-15 and legally sell it in NJ, but the whole family of the M1 carbine, the peashooter M1 carbine for Chrissake, is an ‘assault rifle’: that’s something written by people who know nothing about the topic they are making policy on, which they criticize when done by the other party, hypocritically though not necessarily incorrectly