Am I required to tell everyone I visit that i have a condom in my wallet? After all, some people think birth control is a bad thing.
What about a crucifix? Religion offends some people.
What about the emergency food package in my car’s trunk that contains beef jerky? Some vegetarians might be offended.
Does an off-duty cop who comes over my house (for non-police business) have to tell me who he is? I don’t like cops…
Because otherwise, why is he hiding it?
I live in a country where people carry assault rifles openly on their back and no-one bats an eyebrow. Openly carried weapons are considered a deterrence to terror and crime. If someone came to my house with a pistol in his hand and told me he didn’t want to leave it in the car, I’d smile and point him to a cabinet; even if he said nothing but wore a gun openly in his waistband, I’d probably say nothing, and he’d accept my silence as tacit approval. I’d probably ask him to clear it if he removed it from his holster, but that’s it.
Hidden, though? Either he’s some sort of James Bond wannabe, or he intends some sort of malice. There’s nothing scary about firearms. *Hiding *a firearm, though, is cause for concern.
How would anyone, unless they were a very close friend, know that? Telepathy?
Let’s say you come to a barbeque at my home; I don’t know you, my wife doesn’t really know you. Maybe you’re a friend/date of someone in her department at the university. As you reach for a drink, your jacket opens a little and I see a .38 in a shoulder holster.
Are you there to rob the assembled bunch of academics? Maybe to shoot your ex-girlfriend? Or her new boyfriend? Maybe you plan on getting drunk and firing your pistola at the moon in celebration of…whatever?
My wife’s a law professor, but she also teaches a few criminology courses and works with law enforcement on a regular basis, so my first thought would be that you were a cop; either an poor-mannered or very forgetful cop. Without knowing you, though, how would I have any insight about your reasons for being armed in my home, or whether or not you were a threat?
And there we run into a VERY large cultural difference. Here in the United States open carry is outright illegal in some places, legal but frowned upon in others, and in all cases you run the risk of being the victim, as it were, of a “man with a gun” call to the police. In other words, open carry is essentially a non-starter. Concealed carry, on the other hand, is legal in 48 of 50 states and is the preferred method here.
Be reasonable. If you see a person with a handgun on them, do you automatically assume that they are a criminal? From what you said, I have no choice but to believe that that is your basic assumption about people who carry firearms. Yet those same people have been vetted by law enforcement agencies and have been deemed anything but, so there is some sort of disconnect here, and I’m curious as to what it is.
Yep, that’s exactly what I believe. Or a cop.
If it were a rifle, and they were wearing a dippy-looking dayglo orange vest and a lot of camo, I might assume they were a hunter; but if it’s an average-looking Joe/Jane and I notice a gun (or a gun bulge) on them, I’m going to assume they are either a criminal or a cop.
I don’t know a soul who has a concealed weapon permit.
A knife, of the pocket variety? No. A communicable disease of the sexually transmitted variety? No. Of the casually transmitted variety? Yes. “Bill, I’m sorry, I’d love to shake hands but I’m just getting over a bug, I should be okay.” Pot? At the moment, yes, because of the potential for police intervention.
Basically, anything that could become a nasty surprise to someone. Rule of thumb: My home, my rules. Your home, your rules. If you’re running into an edge case, ask. Now, I know Una’s perfectly safe, but yes, we all know people get weird. Ask.
Peanut brittle? Ask, too. You never know, these days.
Basically, if you’re carrying, you have a responsibility to make people feel safe around you. If some fourth party spots the gun and goes to tell the owner of the house, you want them to go, “Yes, I know, it’s all right.” rather than making a scene. Manners, first, last, and always.
Jettboy, odds are decent you just don’t know you know someone who has a concealed permit.
That’s a shame.
I know dozens. Wouldn’t bother me a bit. If I discover they’re carrying, I’ll inform them that they need to work on the “concealed” part of the equation.
This extreme polar dichotomy of yours is quite troubling indeed.
It’d be like saying every time I see a woman, I assume she’s either a virgin or a prostitute.
I can’t really blame you for your attitude - it is a direct product of the media, specifically movies and TV shows. In the movies, the ONLY people with guns are either cops or villains. Any time a “normal” person has a gun in a movie, something always goes wrong; it jams or turns out to be unloaded, or they drop it, or they accidentally shoot themselves, etc. Guns are never used for the defense of a home or the defense of a person against a random attack - they exist in a world of superhuman archetypes that are elevated to a level far above that of mere mortals. Heroes and villains, that’s all the movies present to you.
Get to know some handgun owners. It might surprise you to know that there are lots of them out there who are neither cops nor criminals.
Surely this isn’t the first time you’ve encountered the idea of concealed carry permits for law abiding citizens. I realize you live in a country that’s much saner about openly displaying a gun, but this board is US-centric and this discussion is mostly about concealed carry in the US.
Millions of people in the US have permits to carry concealed. Are they all James Bond wannabes or intend malice?
I support open carry and it’s legal in a lot of places, but it invites a lot of problems. For instance, it’s legal to openly carry where I live, but the asshole police department here makes vague threats to harass people to discourage doing it - threatning disorderly conduct arrests when someone isn’t doing anything wrong, hassling them on the street, etc.
You get a lot of idiots who become hysterical at the sight of a gun. The police get a call of “a man with a gun just went into the gas station!” and the cops don’t know what they’re dealing with but it’s a situation that can be pretty tense
So most people in the US who are armed do so concealed - not because they’re looking to harm anyone, but because it’s practically easier in most cases, and in many areas it’s the only way to do it legally.
How would you know? Assuming you’re in the US in a state that allows concealed carry permits, you probably encounter someone armed on a daily basis. People generally don’t tell others about their concealed gun - that’s sort of the point - and especially knowing that you’d automatically view them as a criminal I’m not sure your acquantances or friends would be anxious to tell you.
Guns are not remotely special in that regard.
Funny how its always the people who don’t carry guns who have fantasies about all the immoral things one might do with a gun.
You’re not alone in that, jettboy. In a recent thread asking for ideas about what to use as reactive targets, the gun owners suggested things like soda cans. The non-gunowners suggested kittens, or “each other”.
Let me guess: none of your friends voted for Nixon.
Your initials aren’t P.K. by any chance?
I suppose they could always ask. Or just assume that a well-mannered professional person who is not acting crazy, drunk, aggressive, abusive, or otherwise assholic is not there to cause trouble.
See above.
I wish I had read further before I bothered to reply to your question to me. It’s clear that you are inclined against the very idea of lawful concealed carry, so there’s nothing more to talk about.
Wow, I’m not sure how this is even a question. I would consider it extraordinarily rude if someone brought a gun to a dinner party I was hosting. I say this as someone who owns a firearm and is quite comfortable with them.
Someone brought up the “nasty surprise” criterion, which I think is accurate. I would not want someone bringing coke into my home, largely because of the possible criminal penalties. It’s perfectly fine for someone to come into my home without alerting everyone they have HIV, because that’s their business and can’t hurt anyone else; if someone came in with ebola, though, that’s a different situation entirely. Bringing in a gun always includes the potential for violence, accidents, or just simply scaring people, and anyone who brought one in is showing very poor judgment, lack of thought, and consideration.
It’s a bit of a weird modern innovation, too, to even wonder about that. If you walked into my grandparent’s home with a rifle, or a sword, or whatever, they would have been offended, and at best told you to put it up somewhere. At worse they’d ban you from the house.
I tend to agree with the arguments being made by both sides in this thread. It is not “unethical” (because ethics don’t really enter into it), but it is highly rude and against the norms of social behavior.
Zephyurs’ final point was my first reaction - even in the parts of my family where gun ownership is universal the idea that you would stroll into another man’s home with a firearm tucked by your side would be highly inflammatory.
I have the legal right to make broad heated political statements but I wouldn’t do it in a strangers living room.
Bringing anyone into your house always includes the potential for violence, accidents or simply scaring people. Someone might grab the steak knife from the dinner table in a sudden fit of madness and stab a fellow guest in the heart. Someone might pick a fight with another guest at a party over a woman and bash them over the head with a lamp. Someone might accidentally pour a bowl of hot soup on an infant. Someone might accidentally run over your dog when they’re pulling into your driveway.
As for people being scared by someone’s gun, well first of all I will say if the gun is concealed - as the thread title specifies - then it’s not going to scare anybody because nobody is going to see it. That’s what “concealed” means, although some people seem to have extreme difficulty understanding this concept. Second of all, if they’re scared by an inanimate object, which is what a gun is, that’s their problem, not your problem. When I was a little kid, I was afraid of Chinese people. My parents didn’t have any Chinese friends, but if they did, should they have declined to invite them to dinner for fear of scaring me? Or should they have explained to me why I shouldn’t be irrationally afraid of Chinese people?
There seems to be a mentality in this thread of guns being something that can act on their own, like a poisonous scorpion or something. As if a gun could emerge from its concealed holster inside someone’s jacket, chamber a round by itself, strike the primer and propel a bullet into someone’s head, with no human operator. Come on, people.
How is it highly rude to have something CONCEALED, holstered, inside your clothing, that nobody else is going to see unless they unbutton your jacket, reach inside and grab it? This is like saying it’s highly rude to wear a medallion of Saint Anthony underneath your undershirt, which is underneath your dress shirt which is underneath a sport coat.
The OP talks about residential property.
But what about business property?
Is it ethical for me to be in a grocery store and not tell the owner I have a pistol concealed on my person?