A thread about guns getting derailed? Where? Not here. Certainly not here.
I own a gun, and even have a permit to carry concealed, but I don’t. The gun has never left my house except for when I took it to the range to learn how to use it. I can see absolutely no reason why I’d need to carry it unless I started selling drugs or pissed off a mafioso. Thus, I see no reason why anyone should be offended if I ask them to leave the gun at home when they come over to my house. Cop? Body guard? FBI agent? Witness protection program? I don’t begrudge you your right to carry a gun then, and it is perfectly acceptable to leave it in the car, and honestly you could bring it into my house if you really wanted to, but that’s beside the point. Anyone else? I don’t even see why you’d feel the need to carry a gun into my home. If you are a private citizen with no threat being posed to you, why on God’s green earth do you need to be carrying a weapon into my HOUSE? I get what people are saying about ‘Granny coming to dinner in a bad neighborhood and having to park several blocks away’, and okay, if it gave Granny some peace of mind, sure. But anyone else, I’d be a little curious as to why you are so paranoid about being in a residential neighborhood that you’d need to bring a gun.
How is the homeowner going to know? That’s why it’s concealed carry. And I would tend to take someone doing so as saying “I will defend your home as if it was my own” and take it as a compliment.
I carry everywhere I legally can. I do have a couple of friends who aren’t comfortable with guns in their homes; so I leave it in the car. No sweat, no ruffled feathers. It’s their home, they get to set the rules. I’m no more offended by that than by friends who request that I take off my shoes when I come in. It’s an inconvenience, but certainly nothing to get bent out of shape about.
Just FWIW, none of my friends who don’t want guns in their house have any problem coming over to mine, even though I’m armed and they know there are guns all over the house.
Yes, I asked the secret agent question because he seems to be implying that his lifestyle actually warrants carrying a gun at all times, including as a house guest against the wishes of the house owner. True, perhaps, if you’re a secret agent or expect a shootout in the living room.
If you still don’t believe my motives, I’m not sure I have the energy or desire to try to convince you.
I’ll take you at your word, I just think you left a lot of room for interpretive error.
Also, I don’t think Argent is saying he would carry against the wishes of the homeowner. The thread has gotten long, and I could have missed that part, though.
Not necessarily handgun-related, but “going hunting/skeet shooting with my uncle and cousins immediately after the football game” is why my shotgun rides to Thanksgiving in a locked trunk.
Serious answer for handguns? I always have thanksgiving at my dad’s sister’s place–they live out in the boondocks about ten miles from a town of 15,000 where my dad grew up, and in the middle of a 40-acre semi-wooded field. My aunt’s yard is prone to coyotes occasionally, and his across-the-road neighbors are the kind of rednecks who have big, poorly trained dogs that get out occsaionally. Many of my younger cousins are in the 3-5 age range. If he didn’t have his own guns, I’d have mine anyway, because I’ve had to chase one of those damnfool dogs off with a stick before (read that as “physically hit it with the stick until it fled”, and yeah, animal control was subsequently called), and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let one seriously injure a relative.
I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about and I don’t think that a snide, sarcastic zinger is a substitute for reasoned debate. If you have some point to actually make which addresses what I said, then do so. I’d expect this kind of crap from some other posters but not from you, Stranger, and I’m not happy to see it.
No, they just collect forensic evidence. Once the police clear the scene it would be up to the homeowner to clean it up. There are companies that specialize in crime scene cleanup, but you have to pay them.
no, that’s my point. i’m shocked and disturbed that anyone would trounce into another’s home and not ask the homeowner if it was ok if they brought a weapon into their house. regardless of whether it’s concealed.
Yeah, I think this is more the crux of the matter. I’m wondering about people who don’t know the gun carry status of their friends. Is the onus on the gun owner to say, “By the way, I have this gun I carry with me…is it cool to bring it in with me?” or is the onus on the homeowner to say, “We’re not okay with guns–if you have one, can you leave it at home/in the car?”
I’d say it depended on the status of the homeowner’s opinion and the experience of the gun owner–my mother in law doesn’t know I own guns, but I’d never bring one into her home because I know she’s stridently anti-gun, for example. On the other hand, I doubt I’d even bother to ask a friend of mine who was known to be indifferent or positive about firearms.
Perhaps you should think about why your hypothetical might have generated a snide, sarcastic response from a normally thoughtful and polite poster.
The point is you went through a particularly convoluted scenario in order to justify the possession of a firearm despite the disapproval of the host. Specifically, you posited a fellow going a dinner invitation that is in the middle of a crime-ridden ghetto, only he can’t find parking nearby (very popular ghetto, I guess) so he has to walk several blocks through a scary neighborhood in the dark. Somewhere along the way he morphs into a frail, grandmotherly woman who has been recently victimized and is clutching her trust Kimber Stainless Pro Comp II in case any of the local gangs or a passing terrorist cell should go on the offensive.
Why, as a host, you would invite Gramma Jones into a free fire zone and then expect her and her trusty .45 ACP to make their way from and to your crack-den domicile without escort is beyond me, but this hardly represents a very typical or likely scenario. If the situation were really so dangerous that I felt it absolutely necessary to carry a pistol to a social occasion despite the host’s explicit wishes otherwise, I think I’d take in a movie instead. Of course, I’ve walked from downtown Los Angeles to the warehouse district, straight through Skid Row, at all hours of the night without feeling like I was on the verge of a zombie attack. Admittedly, I’m a confident guy and am occasionally misidentified as an ununiformed police officer, but I’m of dead-average height and build, not displaying any prison tats, talking like Kurt Russell in Escape from New York, or demonstrating any sign of being an especially hard target for perpetrators, and don’t typically carry any weapon beyond a small SureFire flashlight and my charming smile.
If my attempt at levity at your exaggeration was taken as mocking, well, that was slightly intentional but meant in good fun rather than malice. As a guest, you should be willing to accept your host’s house rules with courtesy and grace, just as the host is obligated to provide for his guests’ needs and wants. And if you can’t or do not wish to do this, the civil response is to politely decline with regret, and perhaps to offer to attend or meet at a venue and time which is more appropriate to all. “And armed society is a polite society,” is a simplistic and demonstratively false motto, and aggressively challenging the hoplophobia of friends and hosts without a credible cause is just unconscionably rude.
Stranger
OK, point taken. Forget about the frail old woman. Say it’s just a normal person, male or female. This person has to walk several blocks through a dangerous neighborhood at night. This person does not stand a chance against a street thug or several of them. This person wants the reassurance of being able to defend his or herself on this walk through the dangerous area, should the need occur.
What on earth is unreasonable about this scenario?
And by the way, “rough” neighborhoods bump up against “normal” neighborhoods all the time. There was just some person with a thread last week, I think, who was considering buying a house which was on a nice block but otherwise surrounded by ghettos. There are places in my hometown where you can be in an upper middle class area and then walk just a few blocks and be in a shady, trailer-park, junk-in-the-front-yards area. So banish the notion that there is some force field between a “safe” area and an “unsafe” one.
Fine, Argent. If I invite you to dinner and you have to park in downtown Beirut, feel free to pack heat.
It doesn’t matter. If they don’t want guns in their house, you do not bring one into their house. There is no justification for doing otherwise. None.
It’s hard enough making a reasonable argument without having to carry the weight of a stupid one. Just stop.
Argent Towers, my home, my rules. Period.
First, I would never put a friend or family member in a position where they had to park in a bad neighborhood some distance from my house when they visit. Secondly, if, by chance, this did happen, I wouldn’t let the walk to their car alone and more likely I’d drive them to pick up their car.
While I own a weapon, and have a CC permit, under the circumstances you have painted above, and knowing my hosts were uncomfortable with me bringing a firearm into their residence, I would either A. Suggest we meet for dinner in some bright, well-lit restaurant instead, where I’m assured plenty of safe, well-lit parking or B. ask who would be available to either escort me to my car or go retrieve it for me. Safety in numbers and all.
As Airman says, it’s their house, their call if they do not want weapons in it. If the situation makes me uncomfortable enough to make me think I need a weapon, I will either suggest an alternative, or give a polite “no, thanks”.
Any of the alternatives I’ve laid out above would be preferable to disregarding a home-owner’s requests to not bring a gun into the house.
Why don’t you tell me what argument you’re making that’s so reasonable that it makes mine a “stupid one” and warrants being patronizingly told to “just stop” like I’m a five year old child? I think the scenario I’ve suggested is eminently plausible and I think telling someone to leave their gun at home is very rude. I think it’s also very unlikely to ever happen. Has anyone here ever been told not to bring their gun into someone else’s house? Has anyone here ever asked someone else not to bring their gun into someone’s house? Who the hell would ever ask something like that? The whole “my house, my rules” thing is unbelievably pompous when it is directed at something which would be hidden on your body. THEY WON’T KNOW whether you have your handgun or not so what the hell difference does it make? It’d be one thing if someone wore a pistol openly on their belt all the time, but a small pistol in a concealed holster isn’t any more conspicuous than a beeper or a cell phone.