If somebody is carrying illegally in a gun-free zone, then they have demonstrated that either 1) they’re really stupid and careless in the handling of lethal weapons, or 2) they have no respect for the rules and norms of behavior governing handling lethal weapons (or both). Which one of these are you comparing to talking on a cell phone in a theater?
You seem kind of insistent on avoiding the issue of whether somebody is breaking the law. If it’s just a property owners policy that’s one thing. If it’s a law saying you can’t take a gun somewhere, quite different. And my personal judgement a law is ‘unconstitutional’ means dick in terms of my responsibility to either follow the law or face the legal consequences of not following it out of conscience. I can also vote and lobby to change the law, but I can’t just ignore it and it directly follows can’t just ignore others breaking it. And guns for good or bad are serious things, not cellphones.
Most of the previous examples argued between you and others were pretty clearly cases where it would be a law, like schools.
No, the law is orthogonal to morality. It isn’t necessarily wrong to break the law and it isn’t necessarily right to follow it. The law is exactly the same as a property owner’s policy when the property owner is the government.
I’m not sure why you consider it worse to carry a firearm on school property where it isn’t allowed than to carry a firearm at a bar or store where it isn’t allowed. What is the salient difference between these two disobedient acts?
Or they didn’t see the sign? There are lots of ways to innocently carry a firearm. They aren’t all malicious or threatening. Which is my point. Not everyone who breaks the rules is a killer, or even dangerous at all.
Then we have a very basic lack of common ground then, no point to pursue it further. And you’re not even trying to qualify it explicitly by saying minor law (going 56mph when the limit’s 55). According to that statement the law is meaningless. You’d just be guided by what you think is acceptable and the law be damned.
No, there’s an obligation of citizens to follow the law. It’s not at all the same as some private citizen hanging up a sign. The exceptions would be where the violation or law is trivial. And gun laws are not trivial. Saying so would mean gun rights are trivial. If somebody is carrying a gun in a situation/place where it’s highly likely it’s illegal, I call the cops, as should anyone else.
Not sure why exceeding the speed limit is “trivial” but ignoring a sign that says you can’t have particular objects on your person is dangerous and malicious? Can you flesh out the difference for me? Cars are just as deadly as guns, and fast moving cars are far more dangerous than a secured weapon with the safety on. The difference seems more a matter of prejudice against an object than a dispassionate assessment of the risks to me.
I asked the same question in another thread …
… and also got contradictory answers that didn’t seem to add up. Yes, different states are different, but … why?
Anyway, what is the definition of concealed carry? Suppose a gun is covered by your shirt but leaves an obvious bulge? I suppose that would be illegal both in an open-only state and a concealed-only state.
This is one of the many things that vary from state to state. In my state of Ohio, open carry is allowed without a permit. Concealed carry is allowed with a permit. The practical legal effect of this is that I don’t have to worry about accidentally revealing my concealed gun. In some states, inadvertently revealing a concealed gun is considered 'brandishing" and is a violation.
My Ohio permit allows me to carry a concealed gun in 40 states, but I have to read the laws of the individual states before I travel.
If the sign is not properly posted, then you may have a point. If the sign is properly posted, then them not seeing it is just another strike against their responsibility in general, and their responsibility about gun safety in specific.
Anyone ignoring the sign is either willfully breaking the law, or is not responsible enough to be trusted with a lethal weapon. This may not make them malicious, and it may not make them a killer, but it certainly does not absolve them of being a danger to those around them.
Exceeding the speed limit is trivial because speed limits are made with bad drivers in mind. Since everyone has a car, and the bar to entry for driving one is set pretty low, laws need to be made that cater to the least responsible. If we got the 50% of worse than average drivers off the roads, then we could bump up the speed limits substantially, while the risks involved in driving would lower just as much.
What you are advocating, is that not just the better drivers should ignore the speed limit, but that every driver, even the ones that know they really aren’t that good (and especially the ones that think they are that good due to the DK effect.) should completely ignore speed limit signs. And stop signs, and stop lights, and right of way, and you also think that people should be allowed to drive their cars around inside of stadiums and malls.
Then they fall into the “really stupid or careless” category. Part of being a responsible gun owner is knowing, for absolutely sure and certain, when and where you can carry, just like part of being a responsible gun owner is knowing, for sure and certain, where your gun is and who can access it and whether it’s loaded and which direction the muzzle is pointing. You don’t have to be malicious to be stupid and careless; in fact, those are usually orthogonal categories. However, stupid and careless kills just as surely as malicious does.
QFT. If I want to keep my permit, I am responsible for knowing the rules that govern it. It is my responsibility to know the rules, look for the signs, and have a safe and secure means of storing my gun before entering a place where carrying is prohibited.
I disagree. This is being a responsible rules follower. You can carry a gun responsibly while breaking, ignoring or simply missing the rules about what you can bring where. You may be an irresponsible guest if your host banned carrying, you’re certainly an irresponsible law follower if the law says otherwise, but responsible gun ownership is all about safety. And whether you are on one side or another of an imaginary line between “zones” is not a safety issue.
Safety is the principle distinction I’m trying to make. Ignore guns, let’s talk about fireworks. They are also dangerous if used irresponsibly. But I can be just as responsible and safe with my use of fireworks in Illinois (where they are banned) as Missouri (where they are perfectly legal and where everyone from Illinois buys them the weekend before their Fourth of July party). Whether or not my fireworks usage is a threat or a danger depends on how I’m using those fireworks. Not on where I’m using them, unless I’m in a warehouse full of gasoline or something.
The threat posed by a firearm does not depend on what a sign says. You can carry guns safely and responsibly in a place where they are banned as easily as you can use them dangerously and irresponsibly in a place where they are perfectly legal to carry.
So you guys have a lower tolerance for rules-breaking than I do, I see. Sure, let’s agree, breaking the rules is terrible, and those people are awful. But they aren’t a threat or a danger just because they are in the wrong place. They may be terrible for breaking the rules, but that doesn’t make them a threat. Because simply carrying a firearm isn’t a threat. Hate them for breaking the rules, but don’t hate them for threatening people, because they aren’t.
In Washington State where I live, which issues concealed pistol licenses, there is not a definition or clarification in the law of the term “concealed”. I suppose that leaves it up to the courts, but I’m not aware of any case law that helps clarify.
56 v 55 is trivial because it’s somewhere within the measurement error. Going 130 is not trivial. But there is no direct analog between a degree of excess speed and the binary of carrying a gun or not carrying a gun where it is illegal. That is, you’re picking up on a basically irrelevant difference between the speed case and gun case. The relevant response would be in terms of the point actually made, a law or violation thereof everyone can agree is trivial. If you can’t agree that about the example of 56 in a 55 zone, you’re just being obtuse. As you kind of are to begin with in refusing to acknowledge it’s non-trivial to carry a gun where it’s illegal, not where some private individual put up a sign or asked somebody not to. A citizen who sees such a violation of the law should report it. Citizens who want to change such laws should work through the political process to do so. Citizens who want to engage in civil disobedience protesting the law by violating it and facing the consequences shouldn’t have a problem with anyone else reporting them. They should call it in themselves.
I’d say that’s a good thing, overall. Replace them with teachers who are more rational, less hysterical and more politically balanced.
And walking from the “guns allowed” side of the sidewalk to the “gun free” side is equally trivial. Chambering a round and pointing it at people is not trivial. That is the difference I’m trying to distinguish. Going 130 in a 55 is a threat to lives in a way going 56 in a 55 is not. Brandishing and pointing guns at people is a threat to lives in a way that carrying a safe and secured weapon on the wrong side of the gun-free line is not.
Hate rule breakers all you want but please learn to distinguish between them and people who are actually dangerous. If you’re going to call the cops on them either way, can you at least call the non-emergency number and say “I saw a open-carrying gun owner in a place I don’t think it is legal for him to be” instead of calling 911 and saying “there is an ACTIVE SHOOTER THREAT on campus!!!” Is that a compromise we can agree on? The fewer John Crawfords and Tamir Rices we end up with, the better.
Were were not talking about walking from the “guns allowed” side of the sidewalk to the “gun free” side. We were explicitly talking about deliberately entering into an area or a building that is specifically marked as a gun free zone.
So, if you consider clipping a gun free zone to be a small infraction, like going 56 in a 55, I don’t necessarily disagree with you. But then you have to acknowledge that deliberately ignoring the signs, and deliberately entering into an area that by law is designated as “gun free”, then that is like going 135.
Now, I hope you don’t call 911 on someone doing 135 and say “There is an Active Speeder On the highway!!!” But, you may call in the non-emergency line to report reckless driving.
What evidence do you have that teachers who ignore guns are more rational in the first place? (And this isn’t really about “politically balanced”; this is about fears of personal safety.)
See, when guns are not allowed in an area, then if you see somebody carrying a gun you know automatically that there is a problem, and you have a set of responses (which might include calling the law, fleeing the area, barricading yourself in your office, whatever). When guns are allowed, however, there’s no clear set of responses, because you don’t know whether this person is one of the good guys, one of the whack-jobs, or somebody who will be perfectly rational right up until you have to tell them they flunked. You can’t predict what’s going to happen, and you can’t flee or hide until the moment when that gun is pointed at somebody, at which point it might be a tad bit late. A big element of uncertainty has been introduced into the situation, and uncertainty yields fear and doubt.
Put yourself in a situation: you are a professor in a highly competitive environment, which means your students are under a lot of pressure to stand out, to excel. The grade you assign in your class will determine whether this student will continue in the program or be forced to leave. The student did very poorly on the exam, and now you have to tell him so. Rationally and non-hysterically, will your handling of the situation be exactly identical if he shows up empty-handed versus prominently displaying a lethal weapon? (Just giving him a passing grade to get him out of your office might well be the “rational” choice for the professor, I think, but it’s not necessarily the best choice for the student or the program.)
Or change the situation a little bit: the student has made it known that he needs or wants a good grade in your course. You are aware the student is known as temperamental and a bully. Do you treat him exactly the same whether or not he is known to carry?
I think Orwell would be armed in that situation. I am sure he feels he would be able to draw first if it came up.
Sounds like a bunch of stupid professors. A student who will shoot up a teacher due to receiving bad grades isn’t going to be thwarted by a policy of not having guns on campus.