As someone who doesn’t own guns, I get the impression that a substantial number of gun owners - especially, concealed-carry folks - are secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) hoping to be in a situation someday where a nearby assailant begins spraying innocents with gunfire, or an intruder breaks into their house, such that they can use their gun and be the hero.
If this sentiment exists, how common is it? (by your guesstimate)
All the CC gun owners I know do not, in fact, want to be in a situation where they feel a need to use their guns. That’s partly because I try not to hang out with crazy people.
That said, I have no doubt that there are SOME people of that sort, just like some people want to get into a fistfight or start a war with another country.
I feel it is a definite minority of concealed carry people, but it only takes a few to really screw things up for the rest of us.
I have never known any.
But I do have one guy that thinks a zombie apocalypse might be a GOOD thing, but I think he is kidding.
I am a gun owner. I collect antique guns, from flintlock muskets up through WW2 rifles. I do have some modern weapons, but FWIW I’m not the typical AR-15 type of gun owner. I do have a concealed carry permit, which in PA is called a Pennsylvania License to Carry Firearms, and I do own a couple of pistols that I could easily carry concealed. The PA License to Carry also allows me to keep a fully loaded firearm concealed in my vehicle.
I do however know a lot of gun owners, most of which are owners of modern firearms and are not collectors like me. Some of them would probably even be accurately described as “gun nuts”.
Like Broomstick, I am sure that there are some folks out there who hope to be in that sort of situation, but I personally have never met someone who wants to play the hero like that. The vast majority of people in the gun community, at least in my experience, are very conscious of safety, and while many hope to be prepared and ready if a situation like the OP describes ever happens, none of them actually hope to be in that type of situation. Even the gun nuts that I know don’t hope for that sort of thing.
I’m sure the OP’s view of gun owners is fairly common among the anti-gun crowd, but that’s not who we are.
I live in a very safe area, so I don’t typically carry concealed. For safety, my guns are unloaded on the way to and from the gun range. That said, if someone breaks into my house with ill intent, I am able to defend myself and my family. However, I do not hope for it and I do not want to be a hero. I also do not want to take a life unless I absolutely have to. I hope that no one ever forces me into that situation where I would need to pull the trigger to save my life or the lives of my family members.
I have never met anyone who hopes for that sort of thing.
I’d say it’s pretty uncommon…and that’s an understatement. Anyone who has actually taken the carry conceal courses, paid the money and done the tests to get the license knows the major recurring theme in the classes is how likely you are to get sued and/or do jail time if you ever have to use your gun. I recall hours of legal discussions on all the ways things could go sideways, even if you think you are 100% justified in your actions. This perception that gun owners and those who carry conceal secretly wish they could use their weapon is basically fantasy and projection, not reality.
Statistically, one only has to look at how often (or rarely really) someone with a carry conceal actually uses their weapon to bear this out. There are…literally…10’s of millions of gun owners. IIRC, there are over 20 million licensed carry conceal weapons permits issued in the US for 2020. If even 1% of them had this fantasy about wanting to use their weapon that would be 200k+ incidents per year, assuming 1% of them really, really wanted to do this in a given year.
Gun owner here, CCW permit holder, and one who for a relatively brief period did carry. And boy, did I pray never to use it. I was working as a Pharmacy Tech in a late hours location that had been robbed (once in store, and twice in parking lot) within the 5 years previous to my employment.
And honestly, if they wanted money and drugs and I was inside I’d have handed over without a thought. But if they were going after me in the parking lot, where I had nothing to give them, it was an option I wanted to have available.
For what it’s worth, the CCW classes put a huge emphasis on how bad the legal consequences are for using your weapon. They repeat over and over, that if you aren’t at risk of life or limb, to cooperate (although not if you’re being removed from the scene) or to flee. They also encourage you to not intervene in a situation unless you or your loved ones are at risk: don’t play the hero (and soon to be defendant) for a stranger.
The people I worry about the most aren’t the CCW folks, it’s the open carry folks. They carry to make a public statement, and in many cases seem to be itching to use them.
Replace WANT with FANTASIZE and I think you’ll get a vastly different picture. I think very few people would ever want to have to shoot someone, but I think a lot of people fantasize about being the good guy. As XT points out, the odds of anyone using a firearm in self- or public-defense are astronomical. And yet 20 million people having CCW permits, and millions are walking around armed at any given moment. For the vast majority of them, simply carrying a weapon is already part of a fantasy.
I think you are mistaken here. Carrying is a PITA. Even with a subcompact, they are heavy, and the most easily concealable without exposing to coworkers options (IWB, etc) are uncomfortable for all day wear. [ ETA: and most don’t trust things like carry fannypacks which are much more comfortable but easy to lose track of if you don’t think about it ] I doubt even 5% of the CCW holders do so frequently. I was very glad when I stopped doing the job in question and while I maintain my permit, I haven’t carried in years.
My experience having a concealed carry permit and knowing many people with concealed carry permits is that for the vast majority of them this is not true.
Do you know people with concealed carry permits that actually hold this view?
Yes. Most of the people I know who carry daily, actually. None of them are (statistically) ever going to use their guns, and, as ParallelLines says, it’s a PITA. But they do it anyway. Why?
It’s all larping.
eta: Based on the limited information I know about you and what ParallelLines have posted in this thread, I wouldn’t put either of you in that category, FWIW.
Is that your opinion or theirs?
(Checks forum)
Mine.
This all gets into the fact that people are really, really terrible at risk assessment. Also, that projection to a group you don’t agree with and, frankly, don’t understand is rampant. No one I know (including myself, as I used to have a CCW and used to carry a weapon) does this as part of a fantasy or thinks it would be a good idea to use their weapon…or even fantasizes about doing so. And, again, based on the numbers, I’d say that this is born out by how infrequently either open carry or concealed carrying citizens actually use their weapons. With 20+ million CCW licenses and gods know how many open carrying citizens we are talking a handful of incidents…maybe 100? Less? A bit more? Whatever it is, it’s a fraction of a fraction.
People who carry either openly or concealed are, in many cases, vastly overestimating the risk they are trying to mitigate wrt needing to carry a firearm (there are exceptions to this of course). People on the other side are vastly overstating the risks of people carrying either openly or concealed, as well as overstating the risks of just gun ownership in the US or even gun crime in the US (this actually happens on both sides I’ve seen, with right-wingers overstating ‘gang violences’ and on the left just guns in general but conflating all gun deaths with citizens legally owning firearms).
When I took the CCW class (ftw I don’t carry, never have), I remember the instructor spending a few minutes trying to make sure everyone really understood how important it was not to put yourself in a position with a gun that you wouldn’t go into without one.
For example, if you want some potato chips at 1 am, go to the Walgreen across the street, not the gas station 15 miles away in the bad part of town. Or, for a more realistic example, if you’re getting gas and can see the cashier getting held up inside, don’t go running in there to try and stop the robber. That’ll almost certainly make everything worse for everyone.
Along those same lines, he also mentioned that if you’re going to CC, don’t tell your friends you’re doing it because they’re more likely to do something stupid (ie flip someone off, yell at someone over something minor etc) on the assumption that you’ll have their back if things go sideways.
Having said all that, I’m guessing the overwhelming majority of gun owners don’t actually want to use their gun. Like other said, they probably fantasize about it, the same way you or I might fantasize about beating the snot out of a home invader. I mean, we know we’re not likely to be robbed and we know we’re even less likely to (successfully) fight back, but we still think about it.
On the other hand, I can’t tell you the last time I checked the news in the morning and didn’t see multiple shootings from around the city. Clearly a lot of people wanted to shoot someone. I sincerely doubt every one of those was self defense.
Well, we don’t know your friends, so it’s fair, you are in a better position to judge their intents and motivations. Of the people I know who have a CCW and do carry, 90% are or were LEO or private security. They had made it an occupational habit, and were as used to wearing a gunbelt as they were to wearing pants if you get my drift.
The outlier . . . well, he may fit your modified criteria of not wanting to use a gun but possibly fantasizing about it. He (like I) was a long time gamer, and no gamer I’ve ever met is without a back-of-the-head plan for zombies/vampires/alien invasion. But he was also a professional courier (medical, not “Transporter” style), and felt that he was at risk at times.
Sadly, while he was always part of the Religious Right, the the 2016 election and it’s aftermath sucked him into the Republican/Qanon blackhole and we no longer communicate (and it had been a while since we visited in person since he’s out of state).
So, yes, there are a few people who probably do fantasize about it, and that fantasy may (for them) outweigh the PITA aspects. Not in my experience, but then again, there are social, regional and political factors that play into it as well.
As I said, I worry a LOT more about the open carry people. If you’re in the damn grocery store or hardware store with a pistol obviously on your hip, you’re making a statement. I will make an exception for some of the people I see hiking on the local Colorado trails with a revolver loaded with snake shot though.
I don’t know how common it is, but a late friend of mine was definitely in this category. He was a small, unimposing guy, and had limited success in career and romantic relationships. He dealt with his insecurities through a combination of “camo conservative” politics, and (we learned later) lots of alcohol. (A camo conservative is what I call a person who voices right-wing/libertarian beliefs to ‘hide’ the fact that they wouldn’t survive five minutes in an actual system of limited goverment). He moved back in with his parents in his mid-30s.
He claimed to always keep a loaded gun in his truck (and I witnessed on several occasions that he actually did) even where it would have gotten him in a lot of legal trouble (Washington, DC once).
There was very little crime in the neighborhood where he lived, and the police station was 2-3 blocks away. Nevertheless, one night, he thought he heard a prowler and walked downstairs, drunk, carrying a loaded, cocked 44 Magnum. He slipped and, literally, shot himself in the foot, dying of complications a few months later, at 39.
Yes, this was in West Virginia.
That was a hell of a ride.
Isn’t it also generally true that – even in Shall Issue jurisdictions – CCW is a process that requires education, fingerprinting, background check, etc. (where open carry, where legal, generally requires – what – nothing but an age minimum (and a few specific prohibitions)) ?
I think that amplifies your point that CCW people != open carry people. I’d suppose that there’s precious little overlap between the two (and that the likelihood of Wannabe Rambo Syndrome is relatively quite high in the open carry universe).
I got a CCW a number of years ago because I wanted the option to carry a gun without anyone knowing I had it on me. When I would occasionally open carry I would see people get visibly nervous, especially when I walked into a place of business. Open carry if fairly common in Montana, and it doesn’t bother me to see it.
I don’t have fantasies of a shootout like in the Old West, but there are definitely situations where if someone had a gun and KNEW HOW TO USE IT it could have saved lives, like the Aurora Colorado Shooting in 2012. Those theater patrons were sitting ducks.
You are correct. All of the above applied to me for the CCW - training (safety, legalities, written exam, live-fire practice), background check, fingerprinting. And as I stated earlier, they spend a lot of time in the legal section of when/where you can’t carry even with a permit and what you should expect (nothing good) if you use the weapon.
Open carry, well, if it’s allowed by the state, yeah, minimal regulation in most cases.