I partly agree with you in that a given person concluding it’s safer for them to carry a gun is probably ultimately going to fall back on their own conclusion about their own circumstances. That’s not necessarily ‘I just feel that way’. They may have more factually based reasons. But it’s not likely they can prove them to you.
But the examples you give, and your thought process as I perceive it, doesn’t distinguish between what’s safer on average for everyone and what’s safer for you or me. That distinction doesn’t really show up for seat belts. There’s unlikely to be anything so different in my situation that would switch a seat belt to a net safety negative for me when it was a net positive for most people. A seat belt doesn’t really have much of a negative. Trapped in a burning car unable to get it loose? I knew people who drove before seat belts were common who actually thought this was a significant trade off, but it’s generally perceived now to be a trivial factor. Guns in contrast have major potential upside and downside (save your life, cost yours or an innocent life). That suggests a wider range of outcomes of the balance between those positives and negatives in particular personal cases.
I drone on because this strikes me as a major way in which pro and anti-gun talk past one another generally. Violence, accidents and suicides as they relate to guns are highly skewed by personal circumstances. Often pro and anti-gun will duel with links and studies in general when in fact the pro-gun side is mainly, rationally, considering their own welfare, not whether some statistic in a 300 mil person country, of people in often vastly different circumstances than their own, would tick up or down in general from more/less restrictions on guns. This is neither ‘selfish’ nor ‘just how I feel’, it’s basic rationality of self interest that drives virtually everything in human societies. And is in fact the pitch of the anti-gunners ‘don’t you realize how our gun restrictions will help you?’ but then they present general numbers which aren’t necessarily relevant.
Scientific, peer reviewed studies about what is good for me or my families safety?? Bawahahaha
There is no way that accurate stats can be developed due to incomplete reporting and no universal agreement on who & what can be reported and what weight each answer or type of incident is given.
Tell me that my daughter’s death was an acceptable result for me because having a weapon would have 100% not kept her from be murdered. “I just need to suck it up for the good of all.”
Or a sisters rape.
Or the front door kicked in by a crazy man one evening while the whole family was at dinner. Dad went to a face to face and sent me ( I was 16 ) to get the shotgun which was always loaded and to go to the place where I would be 90° from the crazy man. The shot gun made him a lot less crazy real quick as a side note to what my Dad did/was doing. (Not open carry but loaded weapon available to all in the house since we were born. )
Wearing a side arm back in the day while doing survey work that many upset land owners come at us aggressively with a fire arm intending to run us off. ( we were solidly with in the law but a scared and mad land owner can think otherwise on a regular basis. )
Meeting a person while making a sale of a small but expensive item and no real good place to make the meet and neither person having any idea about the other.
Any walk in the woods. ( not the green space the next block over but ‘the woods.’ )
I usually carry concealed because there are too many who get way upset to actually see a gun.
I don’t care about the stats or the desires of others for my safety for I will take the job of safety of me & mine over the life of you & yours every time.
Exception = I may choose to die for you but I am damn sure not going to die because of you or your opinion.
The message boards is a safe place to talk about this. Sitting down with random strangers in the local cafe around here and being all snarky, dismissive after you bring up the subject, well, I hope you brought backup because things are going to get rowdy quick. YMMV
Strange, I was a cable tech for a few years, DAPped (disconnect at pole, usually because they didn’t pay their bill) quite a number of people (I didn’t keep count, but thousands, at least. Probably close to ten thousand). Never got shot at. Some of my fellow techs, against company policy, did carry guns, but they never got shot at either.
I go camping quite often, and by camping, I usually go backwoods camping, far from regular paths. Never needed a gun then.
Now, if you are truly honest about, “I will take the job of safety of me & mine over the life of you & yours every time.”, I find that abhorrent. Taken to the extreme, that means you should kill everyone that could ever possible pose a threat, so, you know, everyone.
Taken to the reality of the situation, means that you do not value my safety enough to determine whether I am really a threat to you or yours before you shoot me dead.
Dunno what happened with your daughter, and I am sorry to hear that, but other people’s daughters have been killed by guns, so your anecdote, while important to you, is not all that important to anyone else.
You haven’t really specified how this level of safety that you are describing is measured. But as the CDC stated: “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual
defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the
crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have
found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims
compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
They are using injury rate, and found that those who defend themselves with firearms have a lower injury rate. Not sure why you dismiss that - yes, more studies are needed which will always be true. Yes it is applied generally so doesn’t isolate away from home/business vs at those locations. Unless you think that there is some lopsidedness with the results, it stands to reason that the findings apply generally since that’s what it actually says.
As to your examples - is it safer to wear a seatbelt or not? I think the positive effects in reducing injury outweigh the negative effects of discomfort and potential to be trapped by the restraint. But see, there’s a value assessment there. Comparing something to something else. I accept you may weigh the values of those things differently.
I think a better example question would be, is it safer to drive or not? Clearly driving is a dangerous activity. If you never get in a moving vehicle, you are far less likely to get injured in a vehicular accident. Many folks have made the decision that the tradeoff is worth it, to them.
To me however, lawful self defense is the primary reason to carry. Without an effective means to employ self defense, a person is relying on the good will of criminals for their protection, hoping that they are not going to be a victim. And hope is not a plan.
I did not say any of this::
Cable disconnects is not surveying out in the fly over area far from towns for things the locals did not want. No comparison IMO… Also was in the 70’s.
You camped in bear & lion country with your small children and did not take a weapon. You are one lucky dude, buy me a lotto ticket would you?
I will defend my family and not matter anything to do with you & yours. I made no mention or indicated that would kill proactively and that is a really lousy thing to say that I was.
We were talking about open carry and how it is silly or wrong or unnecessary. I said she had no weapon and as your side likes to claim, the numbers say not needed but those numbers did nothing to help her just as not having a gun did not help her. I never have ever said she was killed with a gun. She was beaten partially strangled and then drowned.
You have said my daughters death is nothing to you yet you want me to be concerned about you and yours continued breathing… Bawahahaha
So how many of those daughters that you have read about were them selves armed and knew how to shoot. Not just that a weapon they were never allowed to touch was locked in a closet? Or there were on the streets after dark in gang areas? The fact that you , as many others , plainly said that my daughters death was meaningless to you and yet for me to chose my family’s safety over your safety is a bad thing? Bawahahaha
Value your safety, not so much for you but for the general state or condition of the area I am in.
I’m not looking to shoot you unless you are actively trying to get me hurt and won’t stop. I don’t think you have the stones judging only by the posts you make that you are an easy threat to eliminate if you are part of the problem. You are not a threat or a problem to me until you are and only then do I put a plan into action and then, your important depending on how long it takes me to neutralize you.
Read the words & don’t tell others what I really said. You obviously do not have a clue. I get enough of those lies and warps pushing an agenda from the major media thankyouverymuch.
In my life, I still an here because I do carry, open or concealed. I even put my life on the line so people like you could thrive in more safety than any other place in the world.
:smack: Come on, Counsellor. You can do better than that. In other threads you insist that words be taken literally, even defying the rules of normal discourse and common sense to make that insistence. And now you’re swinging from the completely opposite tree?? :eek:
First of all, I don’t think the word “need” even entered into the context we’re discussing. But more importantly … What?!??!???
In another thread I asked a Doper why he sent a text message rather than communicate via voice. Would it have been normal discourse for him to respond with — Because I choose to, because I have that legal right. What, now you’re going to outlaw text messages?
I think not.
Is this what gun debate has come to? Anyone who does not praise the Americanness and Righteousness of guns is someone who wants to overthrow the Constitution? I’d mention something about seeing only black and white, but don’t want to insult those colors!
I may synopsize my own feelings about America’s gunnism and post it in BBQ Pit. Spoiler alert: I will not call for gun control.
The poster claims you’re exaggerating or twisting what he said.
But in any case I think you are missing the point. All questions are not decided by either ‘studies say’ or ‘I just feel’. The answer can depend on actual factual difference in situation case by case. As I mentioned before, this is not really so plausible with seat belts: what’s the downside to a seat belt which could make it a net negative for anyone? So in that case ‘studies say’ is more relevant. But guns have big potential downside as well as big potential upside, clearly suggesting IMO that the net for given individuals can widely vary. IOW ‘studies say’ is less relevant in that case.
Your implicit standard seems to be that only ‘studies say’ would ever matter, and anything else is ‘anecdote’ and irrelevant. I challenge this assumption. My conclusion based on your and GusNSpot’s exchange is that your situations (though also perhaps opinions and ‘feelings’) are different, and you have given no good reason why he shouldn’t carry a gun, nor any good reason for the state to step in and prohibit it. The latter being all that really matters. That some people would choose not to exercise a right: why is that itself of any logical consequence at all to those who would?
There is a gap between “prove” and simply “can’t prove but feel.”
I can’t prove I will be in a car accident, but my decision to buy car insurance is based on more than a feeling. I don’t describe that prudential weighing of costs and potential outcomes as cavalierly as “I don’t know if I’m financially safer or not, but I certainly FEEL financially safer carrying car insurance.”
This is true even though at present, my decision to carry car insurance has been a financial disaster for me and a financial windfall for the insurance company.
What you’re demanding now is that I submit for your approval an outline of how I weigh risks and show, to your satisfaction, that the risks when weighed against the rewards make sense to you.
Which, you’ll note, is similar to what I predicted:
There are two main reasons, in my humble opinion, as to why concealed carry is preferable to open carry in most situations.
Undue alarm. There are many in the world, and I suspect this thread, who have a fear of guns and always in their minds associate them with criminal or irrational behavior. These people are likely to cause a hassle for the gun carrier up to and including calling the police to harass and or arrest the gun holder.
It gives the criminals the heads up on who is carrying. In 1984 there was a terrorist attack on a twa flight in which a navy diver was killed specifically because the terrorists found out that he was in the navy. There is little doubt that in a similar situation anyone who is known to be armed would be specifically targeted thus decreasing their chances of a. surviving and b. being able to stop the attack.
Wisconsin took legislative action to prevent cops from harassing OCers. After the state preemption law was passed in the 90’s all local ordinances regarding open carry were voided. There is no state law against open carry and the right to it was confirmed in a state supreme court ruling. Police agencies tried charging folks with disorderly conduct and lost a lot of law suits. I routinely told my fellow officers that I wasn’t going to back them up if they attempted to make a false arrest, and that they were going to find themselves on the losing end of a law suit if they did. But like many on these boards some people think they’re right because they think their right when they are not and those officers lost big. You probably won’t get fired but you’ll never get promoted if you lose your municipality a large sum of money. Wisconsin changed the DC statute to exempt open carry and also codified unlicensed open carry when concealed carry was passed.
I’ve been able to conceal carry here since 1982. Before it was passed for everyone I used to open carry as a form of solidarity with my fellow citizens who could not conceal carry. Now days I’ll open carry when I walk my dog or go for a run, but I may cover it up when I go into a business. The legality of open carry is now well known here and anyone that would call the police because of it is the same type of asshole who would call the cops over a black man kissing a white woman.
Equating acts of terrorism with criminals responding to open carry is a reach. Statistically open carriers are not being targeted in large numbers [this is the point where someone posts 1 or 2 stories about an open carrier being targeted :rolleyes: ]. In reality showing that you’re ready to rock-n-roll is more of a deterrent than anything else.
Worth mentioning in iowa, a business can claim to be ‘gun free’, but I have a right to go intoto that business with a gun. If the owner sees, they have a right to ask me to leave. If I choose not too, thats when im breaking the law. There may b exceptions for govt buildings or schools, im not sure.
The rare times I carry, I open carry. Typically with a sweatshirt covering most of it. Iowa is a permit to carry, so u can conceal or open carry based on preference. The way I see it, if someone is open carrying, I’m aware and can leave. If someone conceal carries, I have no idea. Frankly I’d almost be more comfortable knowing someone has a gun, than wondering if they do.
Maybe it is because someone carrying a firearm in public DOES affect me? You can wear a helmet if you are driving if you like, or a tin foil hat, or whatever. That doesn’t affect the safety of the people around you.
That is sort of my point. WHY is it perceived now to be a trivial factor? Because studies of accidents showed that having a seat belt on was significantly better than NOT having it on?
If that is the case, why don’t people carry around first aid kits on their persons at all times? Seems to me that carrying a first aid kit would be a great idea just in case of emergencies.
Ok that is fair. You don’t care about the stats, you just “feel safer with a gun” right? Then just say that.
Could you explain better what you mean by this? It seems to me that I should be wary of antagonizing gun carriers lest they decide to “get rowdy” based on nothing but my opinion.
I’m not dismissing them. But that same article you quoted says more study is needed. And I absolutely believe that there is some lopsidedness with the results of DGU at home or at business versus out on the streets in public. Your own thread of DGU has many more incidents at home or a business than it does of DGU out on a public street.
The difference is I can admit that it is more dangerous to drive than it is not to drive. I drive because it is easier for me to get to work, pick up my kids, go places. I acknowledge that it is more dangerous than if I didn’t drive. If someone asked me “Driving is way more dangerous than not driving, why do you do it?” I wouldn’t say “Because it is my right, I choose to drive” I would lay out the reasons I just did.
This doesn’t answer the question of “Are you better off carrying in public or not? How do you know?”
I don’t demand anything. I simply was curious on how carriers derived their risk vs rewards when deciding to carry a gun around in public. “I might need it” and “It’s my right” are pretty much all I have read. Both of which are laughable to me, but I still support your right to do it.
